Florian Zeller, the multi award-winning French novelist and playwright, is as successful in London as he is in Paris. He is the most popular French dramatist in the UK since Jean Anouilh.
His many plays include The Father and The Son, which you may also have seen on film. His regular translator is Christopher Hampton.
The Truth, one of his earliest works, is a typical French boulevard comedy. Theatregoers, who know the plays of Harold Pinter, will recognise how much it owes to Pinter’s Betrayal.
Zeller has said there is no psychological coherence in The Truth and that each scene should be played by disregarding the rest of the play.
Michel (Stephen Mangan) has had a long-term affair with Alice (Sarah Hadland), the wife of his best friend, Paul (Ardal O’Hanlon). He is outraged when he learns that Paul knew all along from the very beginning of the affair and didn’t tell him he knew.
Michel thinks it’s all right for him to be cheating on his wife (Janie Dee) and best friend and lying about it; but it is not all right for his wife his best friend and his mistress to be cheating on him and lying.
Michel is an arrogant hypocrite, and Stephen Mangan plays up the hypocrisy and arrogance to good comic effect in Lindsay Posner’s production. He commands the stage. Janie Dee is also particularly good.
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