A beautiful, frustrating bore: Florian Zeller’s The Forest, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

The Forest is the latest thriller from the French dramatist Florian Zeller, translated by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. It’s a well-worn yarn of adultery, betrayal and vengeance set among the yuppie classes. The action is located in France but the actors speak in Home Counties accents. (In theory, at least. Some are better at imitating BBC newsreaders than others.) Zeller makes his story deliberately arty and obscure. Man 1, also known as Pierre, is a wealthy doctor whose wife, or ‘The Wife’, is played by Gina McKee. Pierre has a hysterical girlfriend, known as ‘The Girlfriend’, who threatens to reveal their affair and destroy Pierre’s marriage. The Girlfriend dies bloodily in their love nest. But was this suicide? Or did she get whacked by Russian mobsters whom Pierre met, rather improbably, through contacts in the pharmaceutical industry?

Instead of clarifying matters, Zeller tinkers with the mechanics of the narrative and keeps backtracking and retelling the story from alternative points of view. We learn that Pierre (Toby Stephens) has an alter ego played by Paul McGann (the boring one from Withnail and I), who doubles as a Russian mobster as well. The daughter of Pierre is in love with a wayward lad (played by Eddie Toll) who also appears as a Russian mobster. And this second mobster may or may not be the same as the mobster played by McGann.

See the problem? Just explaining the basics ties you up in knots. The shifts in perspective create suspense and mystery but of a rather irksome kind. It’s like playing chess with a little boy who keeps changing the rules to give himself an advantage. And by retelling the story over and over, the writer leaves no room for the minor characters to develop.