Review: THE FOREST, Hampstead Theatre

How might Florian Zeller return to the theatre following his Oscar triumph for The Father? Last year, the fêted French playwright scored an Academy Award for adapted screenplay (as did Anthony Hopkins for Best Actor) after transferring his acclaimed stage drama to film. Another movie adaptation soon follows: The Son, starring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby.

Yet Zeller hasn't entirely abandoned theatre for Hollywood - far from it. London's Hampstead Theatre is hosting the world premiere of his new play, The Forest (yes, the definite article remains), the first time that one of his plays has premiered outside France. Once again Christopher Hampton, who shared Zeller's screenplay Oscar, provides a dexterous translation.

But alas, this latest effort doesn't quite hit the mark: it simultaneously does too much and too little. The premise is that a married man is struggling with the guilt of infidelity - although, this being an elliptical Zeller piece, it's not as straightforward as that. We see two different actors playing the man, and scenes are repeated with subtle changes, from a family discussion to a dinner party and the man visiting his mistress.

It's a device that Zeller used to devastating effect in The Father, placing us inside the experience of dementia: faces seeming to alter, time slipping away, locations switching alarmingly, truth becoming harder to grasp. He has also riffed on adultery and deception to elegantly comic effect in The Truth and The Lie.

This new work falls awkwardly somewhere in between. The early scenes have a light touch: we soon surmise that Toby Stephens' blustering husband is counselling his daughter to forgive her philandering boyfriend because he too has a guilty conscience, and that his assurance that all will go back to normal is for his own sake. But we start to expect something more complex as actors swap roles and the design trickery begins.

Anna Fleischle's expressive set literalises how the man has tried to compartmentalise his life: one box for family, one for his affair, and one for work. However, his lover's floral décor bleeds into his domestic sphere via an invasion of bouquets, and, in the bleaker second half, violence and nightmarish visions are sharply juxtaposed with the comforting banalities of home.

But, though sleekly directed by Jonathan Kent, the play never really develops. The framing of the dilemma is too obvious, and Zeller spells out the metaphors, like getting lost in a forest while searching for an elusive vision of happiness, feeling like you're wearing a mask, or the duality of the liar.

Engaging performances from Stephens and Paul McGann, as different versions of the man, do draw our sympathy, but I struggled with whether the character - an admired middle-class doctor with a supportive spouse and chic home - actually deserved it. Nor did I feel that Zeller had anything particularly new to say about this clichéd midlife crisis scenario. An undercooked subplot about a medical conspiracy doesn't add much.

Although the women are underwritten, Gina McKee is mesmerising as the sophisticated wife who perhaps knows more than she's letting on, but who makes conscious choices about how much of the truth she wants to pursue. I would have loved to have seen the power dynamics between her and her husband explored further. Angel Coulby gives a vivid performance as the tempestuous girlfriend, and there's good support from the shapeshifting Silas Carson and Finbar Lynch.

One could read some pandemic resonance into the play, as we all struggle with anxiety while reconciling our Covid trauma with a return to normal. Otherwise, there's the frustrating sense that this time Zeller has led us into a maze with no real reward at its centre.

The Forest is at the Hampstead Theatre until 12 March - book tickets here

Photo credit: The Other Richard

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