The Forest - Hampstead Theatre

[theoracle]

Written by Florian Zellar and translated by Christopher Hampton. A stunning team working on this and some internet themes to be explored so looks like another hit for the two writers. Anyone going to see this?

[stevemar]

Yes, absolutely and thanks for starting this thread. I booked after on Theatreboard a fellow board member posted about the stellar cast being announced.

Even the trailer looks good IMHO:
www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2022/the-forest/

[imstillhere]

I must book a ticket!

[showgirl]

Seeing it next week - unless reports in the interim are dire...

[Mark]

First preview tonight. Very curious to read reports, have had a few duds at Hampstead recently (Night Mother and Memory of Water) so hoping the reviews for this are better.

[Rory]

Really looking forward to hearing about this as am due to see it in March.

[cavocado]

I saw this yesterday and I am still processing it. It's my first Zeller play, so I went not knowing anything about his style and I hesitated about posting this because I'm not sure I understood it well enough, or maybe I didn't understand it at all. I am really looking forward to hearing what others make of it.

It's hard to describe without spoilers, but, for a very general description, the plot is about male infidelity and its consequences, and I think the title is a metaphor for an idea of an underlying 'state of nature' where the male instinct is to pursue women, like animals chasing down prey in a forest.

What I liked most about it was 

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - click to view}
how Zeller goes over aspects of the plot multiple times from different angles, sometimes in surreal ways, examining the psychology of a betrayal, whether things could have gone differently, and the guilt, recriminations and consequences. From talking to my seat neighbours afterwards it sounds like that's a Zeller trademark? The structure of using repetition to pick away at the wound mirrored the main character's tortured guilt very effectively.

It took a while to get going, but after that it was compelling (and horrifying) as a psychological thriller. But there was also part of me feeling a bit bored, because I've seen a lot of plays about middle class infidelity, and much as I liked the layered structure, this didn't seem to be saying anything new.

For me the biggest issue is that it seemed to rely on a problematic premise that men are barely clinging onto the veneer of civilisation and struggling to resist their basic instinct to be sexual predators. The four women characters all felt underdeveloped, just existing as wild 'prey', or as foils to react to and 'manage' male psychology in various ways, e.g. Gina McKee's character mostly stood around looking elegant and anxious, answering the phone and asking her husband if anything was wrong. 

It's an interesting and plausible view that humans are basically selfish and predatory, but human nature isn't just male nature. I felt like Zeller was suggesting that men are just one mistake away from sinking back into their basic instincts, but had forgotten that women might have agency and basic instincts themselves, rather than just existing in the context of male behaviour.

It was a pleasure to watch in some respects, very elegantly written, and the design was beautiful, with three rooms, two side by side and one on top, and all very slickly directed as the action switched between rooms. Toby Stephens and Paul McGann both gave strong performances.

I wonder if I've just missed something big, or failed to see some irony? I'll be really interested to read other people's thoughts about it. 

A couple of other things I found irritating: I didn't get any hint that it was not set in the present, but part of the plot relies on landline phones, which felt like a bit of a cop out, or maybe I just missed the historical setting? And another niggle which might be a mild spoiler so... 

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - click to view}
There are two post-coital getting-dressed scenes. In both scenes the woman character was topless, but the man wriggled about putting his pants on under the covers before getting up to finish dressing. There didn't seem to be any reason in either scene for the male character to be so bashful, so I'm guessing a decision was made by actors or director that the men weren't required to be naked. That felt odd for 2022, and given that the coyness only affected the men, it's hard not to see it as sexism.

[showgirl]

Thank you for the fascinating - and brave - review, cavocado. In your place, ie being the first to post, I'm usually too cowardly to venture an interpretation and say I will wait to see what others think... though sometimes that's because I genuinely haven't a clue, as with The Glow recently. Doesn't sound to me as though you've gone out on a limb though it's a while since I've seen a Zeller play; the most recent version of any of his work I've seen was the film of The Father.

Could you please give an approximate running time? It infuriates me that theatres fail to provide this, even once previews have begun, but it's still not on the Hampstead Theatre site. I think typically Zeller's plays are of the 90 minutes, no interval type so as I risked booking an evening performance, I'm hoping I haven't unwittingly let myself in for a very late night.

[Rory]

I phoned Hampstead and they said 90 minutes with no interval.

[showgirl]

Thank you so much, Rory; much as I hoped, then. Would help if theatres would provide this info asap; my Twitter feed consists largely of me tweeting various theatres to ask this question and many don't respond.

[vickyg]

I'm interested in this but the only other Zeller play I've seen is the Father about 6 years ago and I found it so upsetting, I wasn't sure if I could manage another one! From the great review by cavocado though it seems like this might be a different kind of upsetting and unnerving so maybe I'll give it a go...

[NeilVHughes]

This one is appears to be part of his ‘infidelity’ series as per Truth at the Menier Chocolate Factory a few years back, a sort of Ayckbourn without the depth and built around the French ‘stereotype’ view that infidelity is acceptable and most French men have affairs which by corollary means most French women do as well.

Seeing it in a few weeks time mainly for the cast as found Truth to be rather weak and not as insightful as his ‘family’ plays.

[cavocado]

Feb 7, 2022 9:34:54 GMT NeilVHughes said:

This one is appears to be part of his ‘infidelity’ series as per Truth at the Menier Chocolate Factory a few years back, a sort of Ayckbourn without the depth and built around the French ‘stereotype’ view that infidelity is acceptable and most French men have affairs which by corollary means most French women do as well.

Seeing it in a few weeks time mainly for the cast as found Truth to be rather weak and not as insightful as his ‘family’ plays.

If the women were having affairs too at least it might mean the human condition was explored through women's lives as well as men's. But the implication in The Forest is that men have affairs with wild, single, much younger women, who aren't the type they marry (eyeroll emoji badly needed here).

I like plays that make me think, and I've been thinking about this a lot, so in that sense it was a success. But I like it less and less the more I think about it. The things I liked are outweighed by characters, premise and situation which were tediously reliant on tired sexist stereotypes.

I think the running time was just under 90 minutes.

[theoracle]

I found this very thought-provoking indeed. It's certainly different to what Florian Zellar has brought us before but it's just as absorbing and well crafted. The Hampstead Theatre has clearly taken great care in premiering this new work to a high standard and I thought the way they built the set was very effective. We had an annoucnement this evening that Gina McKee has laryngitis, hence the cancellation on Monday but she persevered anyways. Indeed, she was slightly hoarse at times but nonetheless played the wife very powerfully and gave the ending scene her all. Similarly I thought Angel Coulby was very captivating in this and helped show the power of women on balance with male power. Questions about "the truth" are raised throughout this piece and I think I'm going to continue reflecting on this piece for a while. 

Very interested to hear other's thoughts - it didn't hit me as directly as The Son but it's hit me in a different way. Very interesting evening!

[showgirl]

I saw this last night and think I'm with cavocado with this though would add that I found the play began to outstay its welcome by going round in circles so often, albeit with each new version played in a different way. I'm not sure what it gained, or I should have done, from the repetition and at the anticlimactic end I was left wondering what it was meant to add up to and indeed what the point was? It was also quite shocking to see such stereotypical female roles. Intriguing though and I was never actually bored, just beginning to wonder for how much longer the scenes would keep revolving.

[cavocado]

It's really interesting to read others' views on this play. One thing I forgot to mention in my review was the final scene

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - click to view}
I won't say exactly what it is (in case someone clicks by mistake) but I found the final tableau in the bedroom quite offensive. It's literally dehumanising a female character.

I suppose how you view it depends on whether you think Zeller is just exploring one man's psychological state, or is he also generalising about male-female relations. Given that this relationship isn't contextualised, except by the daughter who is married to a very similar man, and that the female characters are (in my opinion) weak and stereotyped, then I found it hard not to see this as Zeller pontificating about women's place in the world.

[theoracle]

Feb 11, 2022 10:18:39 GMT cavocado said:

It's really interesting to read others' views on this play. One thing I forgot to mention in my review was the final scene

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - click to view}
I won't say exactly what it is (in case someone clicks by mistake) but I found the final tableau in the bedroom quite offensive. It's literally dehumanising a female character.

I suppose how you view it depends on whether you think Zeller is just exploring one man's psychological state, or is he also generalising about male-female relations. Given that this relationship isn't contextualised, except by the daughter who is married to a very similar man, and that the female characters are (in my opinion) weak and stereotyped, then I found it hard not to see this as Zeller pontificating about women's place in the world.

Ahh I was reading the programme interview on the journey home and there’s a reason for the tableau at the end - it’s supposed to hark back to a fairytale Zellar was read as a child. I don’t think it was offensive as such but I see your point. The idea though is still I guess to consider man’s role as a “hunter” I guess.

[cavocado]

Ah that's interesting, I should have bought a programme. Much as I think I'd strongly disagree with Zeller about male-female psychology and the state of nature, I like the way this has stayed on my mind and I'm still 'arguing' with Zeller in my head a week later!

[zak]

I'm new to this site, so do forgive me if i'm not observing any necessary formalities. 

I thought the Zeller was stunning. It's dense of course - the clue is in the title - but then Zeller always 𝘪𝘴 dense.  I went with a friend who sent this review to me the day after, and i think he nails it so perfectly, i should repeat it here:-


"Florian Zeller's new play manages again to dazzle with ingenuity, leaving us in awe at his extraordinary theatrical talents. He manages on stage what many AI visor sets, computer games or any film can only dream of: to put on the same plane different simultaneous realities, and he does so with good old words and flesh and bone actors.

I believe that, with his playwright skills, Zeller has not only created plays of great depth, but opened up a whole new way of staging drama, pushing the possibilities of representing reality on a stage. What he does to traditional theatre is similar to what James Joyce achieved with Ulysses: to lay bare for us the invisible mechanism of our mind. In "The Father" he let us into the perception of reality of a dementia patient, making us, non-sufferers the odd one out and not the norm, a mind-boggling achievement. In "The Height of the Storm", he put on the same space the living and the dead, confusing the borders between the real and the imagined.

Now, with "The Forest", we enter the mind of a man on edge, losing his bearings as he perceives his whole life collapsing around him because of that most trivial of life events: an extramarital affair that he feels threatens his peace of mind. All possible solutions go through his head as he hosts a civilised dinner party, including murder and suicide. The same scene happens on the stage again and again with slight changes that add new information every time until we, the audience are left disoriented, unable to tell whether he is a murderer or it is all in his mind. All constructions of the man's intelligence are put in front of us at the same time, and we are left like an antenna that has been brought down by a gale, broadcasting desperate signals that are both incomprehensible and perfectly rational; and this is the glory of Zeller's craft, that somehow he has made us inhabit the man's fevered thoughts, and we find ourselves deep in the forest in which he is lost"

I'd add that in the sense that The Forest speaks to all of us who have wrestled with intractable problems, it has a universality that perhaps The Father did not. The anguish in Pierre's head [in The Forest] was every bit as real and painful as the anguish inside André's tormented brain [in The Father]. It seemed to me that Zeller was saying such suffering is not the preserve of a defective mind, but can assail even most resilient of us given a combination of circumstances. 

[Rory]

Thank you for posting this really interesting piece, zak, and welcome to the forum!

[Dave B]

Booked a couple of tickets this morning after reading through a lot of the above posts. Very limited tickets on the website, slightly more availability if you talk to the box office (and also they accept theatre tokens over the phone .

[lonlad]

Surprised the reviews for this so far are so "meh" - it's a brilliant production of a provocative play, beautifully served by Jon Kent and his extraordinary design team. Oh well.

[joem]

This is decent and at times intriguing but perhaps slighter than it appears to be, as plays which repeat scenarios but alter them slightly often are - you know it's coming again and the surprise has gone.

Not too worried about leaving spoilers as only Zeller can know what he really means, I don't think there are enough clues here to solve the puzzle, only for each person to come away with his own interpretation. In case anyone is worried about spoilers though, here goes.... for me we are either seeing the same character experiencing different possible (but linked) outcomes as a result of his affair or, alternatively, it's all in his mind. I didn't really engage so much with the characters that I feel the need to ruminate further.

Visually and technically a slick and attractive production, strong cast on good form. This isn't Zeller's best play but it's still ok to watch and a pleasure to follow his unfolding career - can't think of a living playwright whose first language isn't English who is as interesting as he is - in real time.

[showgirl]

Libby Purves (Theatrecat) has given it 4 stars though she also says it's not one of Zeller's best. Interestingly she suggests that the wife indicates subtly throughout the play that she knows about the husband's affair though I didn't read it that way and it's hard to tell, looking back, whether the clues were there. However, cavocado 's point about the women's roles remains the overwhelming impression for me and I don't see how anyone can either overlook or discount this when assessing the play's merits.

[zephyrus]

Just had an email from the Box Office to say that tonight's performance is cancelled "due to company indisposition."