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.

We then cut to the McGann version of Pierre in a bedsit with his mistress Sophie (Angel Coulby,) debating whether she should take a proffered job in Berlin - she's crushed by his apparent indifference to whether she stays with him or not.

Zeller's 80-minute play consists of only a few scenes, repeatedly played out with some crucial variations by the two versions of Pierre: We have scenes in the apartment with Laurence, both before the speech and after it gets a rapturous reception and Pierre stands on the cusp of even greater professional success; there's a dinner party that gets interrupted by a mystery caller who keeps hanging up; and scenes from the affair, which always seems to come to a grisly end, although the reasons differ from one retelling to the next.

Because Pierre confesses to someone, another shared role but one with a much more marked difference between performances: As played by Silas Carson the confidante is a concerned best friend; as played by a cadaverous Finbar Lynch he's a cross between psychiatrist and interrogator. Anna Fleischle's design puts Sophie's bedsit on an alarmingly steep rake, hanging above the (increasingly flower-filled because symbolism) luxury apartment as if it's in danger of crashing into Pierre's public life; or like another dreamlike element to go with a script that regularly references dreams, and puts doubt on what, if anything, is real. I said Zeller's written his play again, and although that's a joke it's not entirely flippant: Like most of Zeller's plays, The Forest offers up a surreal and confusing landscape, only to gradually reveal that we're seeing things from inside someone's head, and for some reason - mental illness or, in this case, guilt - the story we're seeing has become incomplete and warped.

But it also conforms to the law of diminishing returns and doesn't fall together as satisfactorily as the earlier plays. Or rather, it only half-does: By the end I thought the meaning seemed pretty clear (SPOILER ALERT for what may or may not be happening here,) Pierre is beset by guilt over an affair that ended with Sophie's violent death; I suspect the true version is her suicide, which he feels he's to blame for. He's also worried about it being found out, and develops a persecution complex. Depending on how guilty he feels at any given time, he rewrites the story in his mind to say he hired a Russian mobster (Eddie Toll) to kill her, or did it himself, or, when he feels he can allow himself to move on, that Sophie did take that job in Berlin and lived happily ever after.

But where something like The Father also had the very satisfying feeling of the stylistic choices clicking into place at the same time as the narrative revealed itself, The Forest doesn't marry them together as well, and it feels like a lot of it was diversionary tactics. Stephens is perhaps a more emotional Pierre and McGann a more detached one, but I didn't think the distinctions were major enough to justify splitting the role. Laurence is presumably such a cardboard cut-out because Pierre is so distracted that he doesn't really register her any more. But it's still frustrating to have her be such a drip she actually says in all apparent earnestness "lately the phone keeps ringing and whenever I answer it's a wrong number, I wonder why?"

And I know you can expect a French play to be a bit French but this is almost parodically French, from the chic apartment to the protagonist to whom people unironically say "you're just so admired and respected that people don't think they can talk to you." Then there's the affair with a huge difference in age and attractiveness levels*, and the fact that Coulby is twice made to flash her boobs at the audience while her scene partners both construct an elaborate fort out of the sheets to shield their privates from the elements. Perhaps Zeller himself has also thought his work was starting to follow too close a pattern, and this is his attempt to throw a few curve balls at us. But in the process he's lost much of the neatness of the puzzle's construction. The Forest isn't entirely impenetrable, but it does give the distinct impression of trying to look cleverer than it actually is.

The Forest by Florian Zeller in a version by Christopher Hampton is booking until the 12th of March at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: The Other Richard

*although Stephens and McGann could both be described as being past their matinee-idol days, whereas to get the full French experience they'd need to be at least 40 years older than Coulby, with faces indistinguishable from their scrotums