The young playwright Florian Zeller is a wunderkind of the French theatre. His plays have been very successful across the English Channel. THE TRUTH is the second play written by him and recently opened at the Prithvi Theatre Festival. Theatre company Motley has produced the play. Motley had also presented Zeller's hugely acclaimed play THE FATHER last year.
The two plays couldn't be more unlike. Whereas THE FATHER is a searing study of dementia and its consequences, THE TRUTH has been described as "a millefeuille of truth and deceit" (by Kate Kellaway in The Guardian) and takes a hilarious yet unsettling look at the pitfalls of marital infidelity. In this, it owes as much to Harold Pinter's BETRAYAL, as to the tradition of French farce.
The play is reminiscent of a Baroque court-dance in which couples switch partners; but with only two main players onstage at a time. Motley's production has adapted the script, setting it in Mumbai. The characters are certainly familiar: educated, well-to-do professionals, artfully co-ordinating their convoluted private lives and seemingly normal societal existence with nonchalant skill.
Here, we have two couples in which the husbands are best friends. It becomes quickly apparent that one of them is having an affair with the other's wife. But what appears to be a simple, one-sided deception turns out to be far more intricate; and gradually reveals a Pandora's Box of lies and cover-ups. The cheating husband finds himself increasingly embroiled in these, ending with the horrifying if hypocritical realisation that he is more sinned against than sinning.
This production, co-directed by Ratna Pathak Shah and Naseeruddin Shah, is presented in a naturalistic, conversational style, rather than with farcical intent, thus making the characters and their predicament all the more believable. But the pace tends to slacken sometimes, tension abates, and one misses a more crackling, pointed approach. Even so, the inter-personal dynamics of the characters in each scene are perfectly realised.
Naseeruddin Shah plays the husband in an understated, almost casual manner, though not entirely devoid of mannerism. The underplaying is in keeping with the production as a whole; but while it may be true to the character, it doesn't quite come across the footlights and grab you. However, Shah displays a surprising comic ability in the delivery of some of his lines, with impeccable timing.
As his wife, Avantika Akerkar offers a highly focussed interpretation, in which every thought and emotion is precisely expressed, vocally and physically. It is a riveting performance, especially in the final scene during which the wife's own duplicity is tantalisingly hinted at.
Shruti Vyas, in the role of the friend's wife, is a direct, "open" actress who makes the character and what she is going through immediately communicable, while Gaurav Sharma as her husband presents a cool façade of subterfuge. The production has a double cast for some of the roles and the experience may thus vary.
The production's design is simple yet effective. The single set ingeniously becomes six separate locales, each presented convincingly (without any glitches, thanks to efficient stage-management), and is accurately lit by Arghya Lahiri and Rahul Rai. The sound design and execution by Saahil Vaid and Dhruv Kalra is realistic, though sometimes the sound-effects were a little too loud. It was nice to note that body-microphones were not used by the actors; and the natural aural perspectives, in which the superb acoustics of the Royal Opera House played their part, were welcome.
THE TRUTH might be simply regarded as a comedy about extra-marital sex, not too different from the more common bedroom farce; but beneath its entertaining surface, it compels one to examine not only the tenets of modern (a)morality where "anything goes" but also how far one is prepared to go...and how much truth is good for you.
*Jiten S Merchant was the English drama critic for the Times of India (Mumbai) from 1989 to 1997, after which he free-lanced for the paper and on the Internet. He has worked in amateur and professional theatre as actor and sound-designer, and has directed and performed in staged play-readings. Currently, he is an accredited reviewer for Seen and Heard International, one of the oldest and most widely-read online purveyors of music-criticism, for whom he covers concerts of Western Classical music and Opera in Mumbai.
