'The Truth' review — Florian Zeller's intricately plotted comedy is gorgeously acted

Read our review of The Truth, starring Stephen Mangan, Sarah Hadland, Ardal O'Hanlon and Janie Dee, now in performances at the Apollo Theatre to 12 September.

Summary

• Florian Zeller's The Truth is revived at the Apollo Theatre
• The West End cast features a fantastic Stephen Mangan as unfaithful husband Michel
• There's great support from the invaluable Janie Dee
• The comedy seems tailor-made for the post-truth era

“It’s getting complicated,” Stephen Mangan’s philandering Michel says during the third scene of The Truth, the Florian Zeller play seen a decade ago in the West End that has returned with the same director, the busy Lindsay Posner (Equus), and an entirely new and notably deluxe cast. Just how intricate the densely woven plot turns out to be is evident from the squeals and gasps that can be heard from the audience across the Paris-set play’s 85 minutes.

Time and again falsehoods look as if they are in fact true, or the other way round, and Zeller induces psychic whiplash as the four characters – two couples intertwined in infidelity - struggle increasingly to ascertain just what might actually be authentic. Small wonder within this upside-down landscape that an unfortunate medical condition like tachycardia is offered as positive evidence that someone has a heart.

The play is a hybrid of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, to which Oscar winner Zeller (The Father) has expressed an explicit debt, and the commercially savvy Yasmina Reza, whom Christopher Hampton translated from French into English prior to doing the same many times over for Zeller. As with Reza, whose Tony-winning Art was revived last season on Broadway, Zeller specialises in small-cast plays that put characters in a pressure cooker of their own devising.

The problem is that shows constructed with this sort of Swiss watch precision aren’t quite so revelatory upon renewed dissection. As someone already familiar with The Truth, I admit to sometimes feeling that I was watching a well-oiled theatrical machine cranking into gear: the play on second viewing has a faintly mechanical aspect, though the skill of the cast – led by Mangan in superlative overdrive – is never in doubt.

We begin in a hotel room that is the first in a sequence of visual treats from the expert designer Lizzie Clachan, who, like her director, is a holdover from the production a decade ago. Michel is engaged in an afternoon assignation with a guilt-ridden Alice (Sarah Hadland), the wife of his best friend Paul (Ardal O’Hanlon), who gets enmeshed in the thickening cross-current of subterfuge. So, too, does Michel’s own wife Laurence (Janie Dee).

An encounter between the two men following a tennis match tips an obvious nod to Betrayal, a triangulated drama at its most ruthless when its male friends-turned-combatants play squash. Elsewhere, the tone suggests boulevard comedy from a bygone era, refracted through a radio program like The Moral Maze.

The stakes arise from characters – Michel especially – whose certainty exists to be sent crashing down, and it’s suggested that the apparent breeziness might actually disguise something more brutal. It’s difficult to tell if this is a comedy or a tragedy, we're told in an unexpected meta-moment. That query put me in mind of Zeller's countrywoman, Reza, who some years ago remarked at an awards gala that she thought she'd written a tragedy even though her prize was for comedy.

Posner’s cast navigates the changes in tone and knows how to downplay the gathering reliance on contrivance and coincidence. The invaluable Dee (an alumna, in fact, of Betrayal) shifts moods on a dime in a final face-off with Michel in which her psychic terror gives way to tears. Mangan, by contrast, is an outsized solipsist who seems tailor-made for a post-truth era that wasn’t talked about when Zeller premiered the play in France in 2011. This fine actor hasn’t had so juicy a role since The Norman Conquests and could well be an awards contender again this time out.

Some might find the play a tad heartless as Zeller piles on the plot swerves. Where are the same-sex couples, my guest wondered, as seems fair to ask when pretty much every other permutation is tried on for size. And in the interests of evenhandedness, I began to wonder whether the women aren’t shortchanged by a decidedly male-centric scenario.

But there’s no denying that The Truth has been polished to a glistening sheen. I’d advise audiences to go along for the gorgeously acted ride and save until later any nagging questions that may arise.

The Truth is at the Apollo Theatre to 12 September. Book The Truth tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Truth (Photos by Johan Persson)