LAUGHING AT LIES
It’s ten years since Florian Zeller’s elegantly embroidered trompe l’oeil sex-comedy about two couples opened at the Menier under LIndsay Posner’s direction (it’s him again for this revival). In summer 2016, we swooned and five-starred it with delight, revelling in sharply mischievous Gallic callousness; it coasted into the West End with an Olivier nomination. Christopher Hampton’s translation is perfect. It’s simple enough to start with: Michel is sleeping with his best friend Paul’s wife, lying constantly to his own wife Laurence, who plainly sees through him while pretending not to. He constantly talks with sympathy and devotion of how much he loves his friend Paul, including to Paul’s wife while they’re together. Paul himself may or may not know what’s going on: the situation knots, unknots, and almost resolves: at various stages two of the foursome seem to be the victims of it all, but are they?
The role of Michel needs blusterous comic talent, which is supplied beautifully by Stephen Mangan. He has wonderful lines from the start, in his hotel-room scene with Sarah Hadland as his minxy but baffled companion in sin he protests “people don’t go in for ethics any more”, and explains that his cheating on Laurence is not the same as her cheating on Paul, turning on a sixpence to an indignant “We’re both married. Especially you”. Confronting his wife later when she makes it subtly clear she knows what he’s up to, ramping up his main weapon of indignation again with wonderfully blokey “how dare you suggest” lines. A central conviction, which to some extent they all share, is that to hide wounding truths is actually altruistic.
There’s are wonderful confrontations with his wife – Janie Dee a calm, adult Laurence – and with Paul (Ardal O”Hanlon, his deadpan quite remarkable). One longs for Mangan’s Michel to be the loser in this game, since he seems to have started it (or did he?) and as we finally leave them we hope that. But Laurence is cleverer than she seemed and something else is in the air. When MIchel asks petulantly “what sort of play are we in, comedy or tragedy?” there’s a whisper of a reminder that Zeller is the writer who brought us the poignant The FAther and The Mother.
But here it’s all sexual sophistication and merciless exposure of humanity’s lying ways and, until a stunning final moment from one protagonist, little space for compassion. So as I wrote last time “It zings, it turns on a sixpence, confuses, delights, prods pretentions”. Yet it feels as if something, some different receptiveness and mood, has changed in the decade since. Maybe it’s to do with Brexit, and new anxieties about Gallic sophistication. Or maybe we all feel less safe in relationships, marriages, and indeed “truth” itself; we have in this online age dined overmuch on lies and turnaround obfuscations that defend them. So we laugh at them, especially Mangan, but wince too. Newcomers to the play will love it, but something’s changed.
thetruthplay.com to 12 September
rating 4
theatreCat 