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The
Forest
Hampstead
Theatre February 2022
Florian Zeller’s new play The Forest is getting its world premiere at the Hampstead Theatre.
But its superficial story of a middle-class man’s anxieties about his marital infidelity seems old fashioned even if the stylish gloss of Anna Fleischle’s impressive three-roomed set, the ominous low key soundscape, the fine acting and the quick scene changes seem to plant it firmly in the 21st Century.
The audience now expects a bit of complexity to the characters and some purpose to the plot beyond the abstract evocation of male anxieties. And do all the female characters have to seem like barely sketched stereotypes of the understanding patient wife (Gina McKee), the unhappy daughter and the mentally unbalanced other woman?
It begins with the successful surgeon Pierre (Toby Stephens) arriving home to hear about the distress of his adult daughter (Millie Brady), who has broken up with her partner, having discovered he’s in a secret relationship with another woman who is a singer.
Scene two shows us Man 2 ( Paul McGann), who we soon realise is Pierre, in bed with his secret girlfriend (Angel Coulby), a singer who becomes more demanding and in the tradition of the film Fatal Attraction increasingly threatening.
Subsequent nightmarish scenes may or may not be an imagined projection of Pierre’s anxiety, but include a Russian who offers to solve his girlfriend problem, repeated glimpses of the bloodied body of a woman, a white-faced man (Finbar Lynch) interrogating him and a dead stag in his girlfriend's bed.
The supposedly obsessional girlfriend is always around, anonymously phoning Pierre’s home, appearing naked in a picture that hangs in Pierre’s living room and arriving like Banquo’s ghost to his social gathering where only he can see her.
It’s all a bit peculiar if predictable and in case you didn't quite catch everything, a number of the scenes are repeated to help you remember. But they add nothing significant to the story, though they do make the eighty minutes running time seem a lot longer.
There is no complexity to Pierre’s character or the plot he is supposed to carry. This is simply a very good production of a very slight play.
Keith
McKenna
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Review - The Forest - Hampstead Theatre 2022