Florian Zeller, the multi-award winning French novelist and playwright, is having a big success in Paris and London. Audiences who have enjoyed his plays, The Father and The Mother, can now catch up on one of his earlier works, The Truth, a witty and typically French boulevard comedy, at Menier Chocolate Factory. Regular theatregoers will be surprised how much it owes to Harold Pinter’s Betrayal.
Michel (Alexander Hanson) is having an affair with Alice (Frances O’Connor), the wife of his best friend, Paul (Robert Portal); and is outraged when he learns that Paul has know all along and didn’t tell him he knew. He thinks it is all right for him to be cheating on his wife and best friend and lying but not all right for his wife (Tanya Franks), his best friend and his mistress to be cheating on him. Michel is an outrageous hypocrite and an absolutely terrible liar. Hanson is very funny.
Zeller has written a companion piece, The Lie, which, hopefully, will also be translated.