Theatre review: The Forest

Florian Zeller's written his play again, and this time it gets its world premiere not in his native French but in English, and not at the Kiln but a couple of stops down the Jubilee Line at Hampstead Theatre. As usual Christopher Hampton takes on translation duties for The Forest, for most of the characters at least - I got the distinct impression that Laurence had had her dialogue run through Google Translate. This disparity in style presumably has some significance; either that, or Gina Mckee has seriously pissed someone off, and got punished with the role of a rather dim-witted robot. Laurence is married to Pierre, a successful and influential surgeon, played in Jonathan Kent's production by both Toby Stephens and Paul McGann. We first see the Stephens version in his Paris apartment with his wife, preparing to make a speech making major recommendations on French medical policy and its relationship with Big Pharma.

Theatre review: The Son

The Son is being advertised as the final installment in a trilogy of Florian Zeller plays that began with The Father and continued with The Mother; apart from the obvious connection in the titles there isn't, to me, a link that The Height of the Storm couldn't lay equal claim to. If not more so, because while all four are about families dealing with one person's deteriorating mental health The Height of the Storm, like the first two in the series, features a narrative that dips in and out of that fractured mind, putting the audience on the back foot. If The Son's narrative is also meant to be unreliable that's not apparent, though, as we appear to be seeing what the other characters can when 17-year-old Nicolas (Laurie Kynaston) reacts to his parents' divorce with a violent depression. His mother Anne (Amanda Abbington) discovers that he hasn't turned up at school for three months, and turns to her ex-husband for help.

Theatre review: The Height of the Storm

After premiering in Bath and Richmond, The Height of the Storm is the latest Florian Zeller play to make it to the West End, with director Jonathan Kent taking a risk on putting two notoriously difficult actors on stage together. The vague description in the publicity suggests another rather dark, sad journey into confusion and failing mental health, and while I’m generally a fan of cheerier things, where this writer is concerned I’d rather see him return to intimate tragedies than the so-so farces of his lighter side. Anne (Amanda Drew) and Elise (Anna Madeley) have gone to their parents’ home in the French countryside for the weekend; it soon becomes apparent that one of their parents has recently died, but Zeller deals in confusion and it’s hard to figure out which one, as both André (Jonathan Pryce) and Madeleine (Eileen Atkins) appear on stage regularly.

Theatre review: The Lie

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Official critics are invited this Wednesday.

The critics may well get to see one of the leads performing most of the play script-in-hand as Alexander Hanson, a late replacement for an ill James Dreyfus, was at today’s performance only off-book for two of the play’s scenes. This is for the latest from Florian Zeller, who seems to like his plays to come in pairs: The Truth is followed up by The Lie, another comedy of infidelity, which even has its characters share the names of the earlier play’s quartet (although they don’t actually appear to be the same characters, unless they’re alternate-universe versions.) And as The Truth was about lies, then The Lie is about truths, and passing off the truth as a lie. If that all seems a bit convoluted and circular you should see the actual dialogue, which at one point I thought had actually turned into a real-life version of the famous “loop” scene from The Play That Goes Wrong.

Theatre review: The Truth

Prolific French writer Florian Zeller is fast becoming ubiquitous on the London stage; after the pairing of The Father and The Mother took a dark and moving look at crumbling minds and crumbling relationships, a change of tack with a much lighter look at rocky marriages in The Truth (which also has a companion play, and I imagine we'll see The Lie here too soon enough.) For the last six months Michel (Alexander Hanson) has been having an affair with Alice (Frances O'Connor,) the wife of his best friend Paul (Robert Portal.) They've been meeting in the afternoons in a hotel room, but things get derailed as it seems Paul and Michel's wife Laurence (Tanya Franks) might have cottoned on to the affair. Alice thinks they should just confess all to their spouses but Michel thinks they can brazenly style it out - presumably not realising just how bad a liar he is.

Theatre review: The Mother

Not only was The Father a critical hit last year (including with me - I put it in my 2015 Top Ten,) it was also a surprising commercial success: One West End transfer would have been impressive for a hallucinatory show about mental illness, but it's getting a second one and a tour. So it's not surprising to see Florian Zeller's companion piece The Mother (again translated by Christopher Hampton) follow it quickly to London, with Laurence Boswell's production setting up shop at the Tricycle. Where The Father's deliberately confusing scenes took us into the head of a man with a form of dementia, The Mother has a much younger character at its heart and a less obvious diagnosis, initially at least, as Anne (Gina McKee) seems to have reacted in an extreme way to empty nest syndrome. An upper-middle class housewife in her late forties, she's dedicated her life to her children, especially her son Nicholas (William Postlethwaite, adding to an already-impressive list of dubious facial hair choices,) for whom she shows an uncomfortably Oedipal level of devotion.

Theatre review: The Father (Tricycle Theatre)

André (Kenneth Cranham) has lived in his Paris flat for decades, but after he's scared off a number of carers his daughter Anne (Claire Skinner) is worried he won't be able to live alone there much longer. She's planning to move to London with boyfriend Pierre (Colin Tierney,) and sending her father to a care home might be the best option. Or maybe she should move André in with them, and get a new carer, Laura (Jade Williams) to look after him during the day? In fact, maybe this has already happened? Florian Zeller's play The Father, which arrives at the Tricycle in a translation by Christopher Hampton and production by James Macdonald first seen in Bath, is a rather extraordinary look at ageing and dementia, that takes us through the story of Anne being increasingly unable to recognise the sometimes charming, sometimes cruel man her father has become. But unlike other takes on the subject, Zeller attempts to give the audience an idea of what the story seems like from inside André's head.