Review of a revived farce in the West End

The set for The Truth, the latest farce to hit the West End, is  austere – stripped back to the minimum needed to convey what it must. And the same could be said of Florian Zeller’s sleekly efficient script, precision-engineered to hit each necessary beat to methodically turn up the heat on the self-inflicted predicament that Stephen Mangan’s Michel finds himself in. 

Does streamlined control come at the cost of flair and warmth? A little. But pace, confidence and perfect casting gloss over any shortcomings, letting the plot breeze wittily towards its inevitable denouement.  

This may be a sex farce, but it’s a French one, which means it’s about exposing hypocrisies not undergarments. Neither the names, nor the geography – nor the casual acceptance of extramarital affairs – have been anglicised. 

Michel, we know from the start, is sleeping with Alice, the wife of his best friend Paul, grabbing stolen moments in hotel rooms between meetings. Our anti-hero is a self-absorbed shit, arrogantly blind to his own failings as he calls out the immorality of others. In his mind, it’s much worse that Alice is cheating on her husband than it is that he is cheating on his wife.

Mangan’s made a good career out of playing such conceited men, whose flaws are both mitigated and enabled by their charisma. His strong comic performance helps soften Michel’s deceit – aided by the fact that his misdeeds are driven more by a blinkered outlook than anything overtly manipulative – and ensuries the audience have enough empathy that his downfall means something.

As Paul and Alice, Ardal O’Hanlon and Sarah Hadland both draw upon their sitcom personas, but advance them. Hadland takes some of the naivety she showed as Miranda’s sidekick Stevie but loses the ditziness and shows fine comic timing as Mangan’s foil, even if her role isn’t the most layered.

Meanwhile, O’Hanlon takes Father Dougal’s lack of guile and subverts it more than enough to put memories of Father Ted aside. Paul is utterly, intriguingly unreadable – does he know what’s going on behind his back? And if so is he really so accepting of his wife’s infidelity? The ambiguity drives the farce.

Michel’s wife Laurence, as played by Janie Dee, is similarly inscrutable, and fascinating because of it. She balances robust emotional control with apparent insecurities, surely justified given her husband’s behaviour, while displaying an instinctive ability to slice through the artifice. 

Even at a brisk, interval-free, 90 minutes, The Truth can be a little slow setting up its skittles – but as each is knocked down with ever-increasing consequences, the play becomes joyfully funny  amid its unstoppable momentum, making Michel fall apart with every fresh ramification of his actions.

Director Lindsay Posner – reviving this show a decade after he oversaw its West End debut – and his skilled cast make the most obviously farcical scenes pop, while driving the action forward with such purpose and vim you can overlook the characters’ inherent unlikability and the slightly smug philosophical aperçus that are rarely as profound as they initially seem. 

Just submit to the spirited performances and let the slick mechanics of the writing do their work.

• The Truth is at the Apollo Theatre until September 12. Book here.

Review date: 25 Jun 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett