The Truth at a glance

Show
The Truth
Status
Apollo Theatre run closed 12 September 2026
Theatre
Apollo Theatre, 31 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7EZ
Run
9 June – 12 September 2026 (strictly limited 14-week season)
Genre
Play (comedy)
Running time
1 hour 30 minutes, no interval
Age guidance
12+ (under-15s accompanied by an adult)
Writer
Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton
Director
Lindsay Posner
Cast
Stephen Mangan (Michel), Sarah Hadland (Alice), Ardal O'Hanlon (Paul), Janie Dee (Laurence)
Understudies
Adam Morris, Roisin Rae
Set and costume
Lizzie Clachan
Lighting
Richard Howell
Sound
Adam Cork
Assistant director
Rosie Tricks
History
Posner's original production premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2016 and transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in 2017, earning an Olivier nomination for Best New Comedy
Next at this venue
My Son's a Queer (But What Can You Do?), to 3 October 2026

Looking back: The Truth at the Apollo

4.5
★★★★★

LTH Retrospective Rating

Retrospective by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 22 September 2026.

The Verdict

Lindsay Posner's revival of The Truth closed at the Apollo Theatre on 12 September 2026 after a strictly limited fourteen-week run. Florian Zeller's play is built like a farce and thinks like a philosophy seminar: Michel is sleeping with his best friend's wife, lying to his own wife about it, and increasingly convinced that lying is the kind thing to do. Then the people around him start lying back. Stephen Mangan played Michel with what Time Out called "irresistible hangdog charm," and the production's real achievement was letting Janie Dee's Laurence turn a very funny evening quietly sad in its last ten minutes.

The notices were largely warm. The Guardian gave five stars for "a modern French farce" with "a metaphysical dimension." The Telegraph, at four, found Mangan "sheepishly appealing even when he's being frankly appalling." The Financial Times, also four, called it "clever, elusive"; the Evening Standard, "a glossy, old-fashioned West End night out"; WhatsOnStage drew the obvious comparison with Pinter's Betrayal, "but here the tone is much lighter." The Times settled on three — it "breezes along with a wry, occasionally self-satisfied grin" — and The Stage, alone at two, found the script "strangely flat-footed." Nobody disputed the cast.

What Made It Special

  • Stephen Mangan's Michel. The performance every review led with — a liar so pleased with himself that the audience keeps forgiving him a beat longer than it should.
  • Janie Dee's Laurence. Time Out singled out her "lingering, discomfiting strain of sadness"; it is the role that turns the play from a farce into something with a cost.
  • Ninety minutes, no interval. Home by ten, and a structure that tightens rather than sags — the reason this was the summer's most reliable West End recommendation for a classic night out.
  • Posner's second go. The director revived his own 2016 Menier production, which had transferred to Wyndham's in 2017 and earned an Olivier nomination — with a new, starrier company and Lizzie Clachan's design.
  • Zeller, translated by Hampton. The writer of The Father and The Son, in the hands of the translator who has carried all of his plays into English.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in The Truth?

Michel and Alice are in a hotel room. She is married to Paul, his oldest friend; he is married to Laurence. Alice wants to stop lying to Paul. Michel does not see the problem — a lie, he argues, is a courtesy, a way of protecting the people you love from information that would only hurt them. He is very persuasive. He is also, it turns out, not the only one at the table with something to hide.

The lies stack up

A tennis match with Paul, who seems oddly unbothered. A dinner with Laurence, who asks one too many questions. A weekend away that requires a cover story, and a cover story that requires another. Zeller's structure is a series of two-handers, each one reversing what the last one told us, so that the audience is kept a step ahead of Michel and then, abruptly, a step behind.

The truth, eventually

By the end, every relationship on stage has been reframed at least once, and the question the play leaves behind is not whether Michel deserved what he got but whether honesty was ever the point. The final scene belongs to Laurence, and to what she chooses to say — or not.

This production

Lindsay Posner directed, on Lizzie Clachan's set and costumes, lit by Richard Howell with sound by Adam Cork. One hour thirty minutes with no interval, age guidance 12+.