Monsieur Zeller is now three plays in to his UK conquest and we can take stock to see what he is about. His technique and delight is to play with our and his characters’ perception of reality. Not in some flaky pseudo-metaphysical sense, but the slap-in-your-face realities of misunderstood or misperceived situations. In The Father it was the crumbling reality of a man with advancing dementia. In The Mother a similar disintegration is brought on by a drink/drug problem, which has at its core an emotional hurdle that confronts all parents when children move on to independence.
The Truth is a bedroom farce without a bedroom of imminent discovery or slamming doors or hasty exits, closets or screens. Despite or perhaps because of an excellent translation by Christopher Hampton, a cool detachment, a matter-of-factness that removes it from the often clumsy concerns of British comedies of sexual manners sets this in the tradition of French farce. Yet the fun is mental rather than physical, with the central character, Michel, having to perform the kind of volte-face that so tickled us in Fawlty Towers when we could see Basil hastily rearranging his story after a crashing faux pas. The desperate rushing hither and thither, that is the unwinding spring of farce leads to perceptual doors opening into new understandings of the realities of the situation.
Michel (Alexander Hanson) who is happily married to and still in love with Laurence (Tanya Franks) is having an affair with his best friend’s wife, Alice (Frances O’Connor), who is succumbing to feelings of guilt and decides to tell her husband, Paul (Robert Portal). He, Michel, gets worked up at the thought of detection and frantically tries to prevent Alice from revealing the truth which when it is finally unravelled turns out to be anything other than straightforward. No small part of the joy in The Truth is the extent to which each new understanding of the reality of the situation is soon superseded by yet another, with the whole scenario becoming gloriously Byzantine in its complexity – whilst remaining gleefully transparent to the audience. Each time we think we have reached the bottom of the plot a new Russian doll pops out to confound our grasp on the narrative core. Truth, guilt, jealousy, morality and hypocrisy are whisked into something so delightful I fear we shall become addicted.
We delight in Michel’s squirming and we delight in his come-uppance, indeed there is so much to delight that only concern for the delight of audiences yet to pay their coin prevents me from blurting out the full menu. (Though I suspect that Lindsay Posner’s playing of his hand is so skilful that succeeding viewings would not lose by familiarity.) Suffice to say that all the characters are acting with moral poker faces, apart from the one, Michel, who thinks he is the only one successfully acting the lie.
With all the joy of farce, all the complexity of the best comedy of manners and four winning performances this is laugh out loud stuff of the highest quality. ★★★★★ Graham Wyles 10th May 2016
