Stephen Mangan Stars in The Truth at the Apollo Theatre

The Truth | Apollo Theatre until 12 September 2026

Stephen Mangan leads a fiendishly clever comedy of adultery and self-deception that keeps you guessing right to the final curtain

Lies, layers and a lot of laughs: The Truth at the Apollo Theatre is a scintillating comedy about relationships, marriages, the lies we tell other people, the lies we tell ourselves, and how knotty and complicated being in a relationship can be. As Noël Coward said, “If I want to write about something serious, of course I write a comedy.” Florian Zeller, who wrote this play, probably felt the same way.

The show stars Stephen Mangan, alongside Ardal O’Hanlon, Sarah Hadland, and Janie Dee. Mangan plays Michel, a man who’s having an affair with Alice, who happens to be his best friend Paul’s wife. So you’ve got a basic French farce set-up. But then it starts to become like an onion with layers, constantly pulling the rug out from under you. Every time you think you understand who knows what and who’s doing what to whom, the cards shuffle again. By the end, you’re genuinely not sure who was deceiving whom, or whether anyone in this story ever told the truth about anything. It’s ninety minutes of wonderful, delicious mental gymnastics. It’s very funny, but it also has something more profound to say running underneath.

It’s been in a smaller theatre before, the Menier Chocolate Factory, where you felt you were eavesdropping. Here it is in a larger theatre, but the set moves very swiftly between all the various scenes. I do have one particular bugbear, though: there is a table and two chairs that, when we open in the hotel room, I thought, “Well, those table and chairs would never be in a hotel room.” Then we move to Michel’s house, and I think, “Well, that doesn’t really fit with his house.” Then we go to the tennis changing rooms, and there’s the table again, and it doesn’t fit there. And then we go to Ardal O’Hanlon’s character’s house, and it doesn’t really fit there either. So I was driven mad by this table. I can understand why they did it: they want a table that will fit every scene. But what they’ve ended up with is a table that doesn’t fit any of the scenes it’s in. It’s not badly made; it’s just terribly bland and, in my view, the wrong style for all of the settings.

But other than that, the whole set changes really, really swiftly, so it doesn’t drag, and ninety minutes is the perfect length for this play. Florian Zeller has written a series of plays: The Mother, The Father, The Son. The Father was the play turned into a film, which won an Oscar for Anthony Hopkins, and is a portrait of dementia. There is a parallel piece to this called The Lie, and I’m hoping that may be revived as well, possibly with this cast. I once had the idea and the rights for a while to do them in rep, so people could come and see them on different evenings, because they feature characters with the same names. Are they the same people? We’re not quite sure, because Florian Zeller is a little bit like Harold Pinter, although not quite as obscure, and with fewer pauses!

Mangan is quite wonderful as Michel, with his frustration and petulance growing with each twist and turn. Hadland is equally delightful, and Dee makes the most of her limited stage time, delivering a performance of poise and elegance with just a hint of what is going on underneath. It is only O’Hanlon who, on the night that I saw it, appeared slightly ill at ease on stage. He wasn’t helped by the costume choices, which didn’t appear to be particularly French or sophisticated.

Florian Zeller’s French farce keeps pulling the rug out from under you until you’re not sure who was deceiving whom. Ninety minutes that never outstays its welcome.

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