ROBERT GORE-LANGTON

The Forest

Hampstead Theatre, London

Until March 12, 1hr 20mins

Churchill once said: ‘I am, of course, exceedingly proFrench; unfortunately the French are exceedingly pro-voking.’ I feel the same about the Parisian prodigy Florian Zeller, whose plays are utterly watchable but also infuriatingly cryptic.

The guy is undeniably a one-man hit factory and his plays often end up as films: The Father bagged Anthony Hopkins an Oscar;

The Son – yet to be released – will star Hopkins, Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby.

In this world premiere, it’s translated, as ever, by Zeller’s lieutenant, Christopher Hampton, into English dialogue you wouldn’t know had once been French. It’s superficially a standard middleclass adultery play – a Gallic specialism – with a fine cast including Toby Stephens, Gina McKee and Paul McGann.

Stephens oozes anxiety as the surgeon who is having an affair; McKee is brilliant as his solicitous wife; their daughter (Millie Brady) cries a lot because she has been betrayed by her boyfriend.

When in bed with his lover, however, the doctor is played by another actor (McGann). Is he an alter ego? A guilty projection? A

different bloke altogether? Whoever he is, his lover (Angel Coulby, who has to go topless part of the time) wants him to herself. In fact, in her unstable rages she becomes a bit of a bunnyboiler, threatening to expose their affair to his wife.

She later appears totally ketchupped like Banquo’s ghost in one of a shoal of surreal red herrings.

At the outset, this saga of sex and comeuppance seems straightforward.

But reality takes an early bath. Scenes are repeated, identities blur, the plot shifts and cracks like pack ice.

Presiding over the surgeon’s crumbling sanity is a nightmarish interrogator – his shrink, perhaps, or a police inspector – played with sinister intent and whiteface make-up by Finbar Lynch. He’s in league with a creepy young

heavy (Eddie Toll) straight out of a Pinter play. Towards the end there’s an appearance from the titular forest of a symbolic dead stag. Oh dear!

Despite the top-notch production values (the flawless direction is by Jonathan Kent) and a gorgeous three-room set (by Anna Fleischle), this classy evening has a wholly fake sense of depth.

A sleek, Sudoku-ish sort of play, but probably just too baffling to interest Hollywood.

TOO BAFFLING: Paul McGann and Gina McKee