Ann Grafft and Matt Walsh in The Truth
If we don't see what happened, we must depend on what others say is the truth. But the truth isn't always visible. Does "the truth" depend on how many witnesses? Their reliability; their knowledge; their agenda? A woman slides a knife into a helpless, unarmed man. Is it felony assault? Not if the woman is a doctor, the weapon is a scalpel, and the man had consented in writing.
On Saturday, I visited the Black Box Theatre for a premiere event, in both senses of that word. The Truth [La Vérité] is a 2011 play by prolific French playwright/director/novelist Florian Zeller. His best-known work is the internationally acclaimed 2020 film The Father, which he wrote and directed, based on his play. This English version of the The Truth was translated and adapted by British playwright Christopher Hampton, who wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Hampton also partnered with Zeller on The Father and other projects. In other words, they stayed friends and colleagues after The Truth, so that's a significant triumph.
Another triumph is that we're seeing this play in Moline – or anywhere at all in this country, as the Black Box is the first U.S. theatre to win the rights to the show after its considerable success in France, England, and elsewhere. Theatre co-founder and artistic director Lora Adams (also a member of the production's four-person ensemble) launched a dogged campaign in 2017 to make that happen, having seen The Truth the year prior in London's West End.
Bradley Robert Jensen, meanwhile, directed this entertaining production. I knew Jensen both as the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's resident costume designer and as a performer. Actors can have a particular advantage when they direct, and that's true here. The script is a farce – a comedy form that American audiences may know best from TV series such as Fawlty Towers and Frasier. However, this play never approaches the slapsticky, prop-hurling wackiness level of either. Though it's dialogue-rich, Jensen does admirably in keeping things visually compelling through the actors' natural use of the stage space, without anyone throwing anything except a tantrum.
Zeller's 90-minute one-act is set in France, naturally, and translator Hampton retained the French place names and proper names. Jensen's actors, however, employ English accents, which lets you imagine that their characters are expats. At first, I was taken aback by references to working in Sweden, until I remembered that all of western Europe could be plopped on top of the U.S. mainland with room to spare. Theoretically, you could have breakfast in Paris and drive to Stockholm for dinner. Also, the British term "surgery" can simply mean "doctor's office," not necessarily "cutting someone open." (There's that scalpel again.)
Adams designed the bland-but-lovely, spare set, and constructed it with Jensen, Michael Kopriva, and The Truth co-star Jonathan Grafft. It works seamlessly as six different locations, with slight adjustments. A bed was removed and added so soundlessly between scenes, it seemed to have been magicked onstage. The play centers on infidelity, and posits that truth and lies can be used for good or evil – and both are subjective.
Matt Walsh's Michel is the most self-centered man ever. He's whole-hog out for himself and his desires of the moment; however, he lacks the skills, intelligence, and savoir-faire to attain those desires effectively. He's focused on the prize, but not clever and conniving enough to actually plan his deceits – he can only concoct the very next words to come out of his mouth, with sloppy damage control afterward against whatever disaster those words have wrought. Michel fancies himself the best everything – but instead, he's the perfect unwitting buffoon, and Walsh makes him supremely hilarious.
Michel is in every scene, and the story unfolds from his point-of-view only. Therefore, unlike in some farcical plots, the audience is not waiting gleefully for the character to discover secrets we've already seen; we only know what he knows (albeit a few moments sooner, as we have working brains, and his is so crammed with himself that he's initially oblivious). Walsh has miles of lines, and pronounces every syllable to superbly British perfection. I first saw him in this theatre in 2020, playing all the male roles in The Turn of the Screw. I was thrilled he was in this show, but in fact, I'm a fan of the whole cast.
Ann Grafft plays Michel's lover Alice, ably traveling from flirty to needy to forceful as situations require. My first glimpse of the performer was when she played Cookie so wonderfully in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Rumors in 2017. She's a prize, and I'd like to see her onstage more often. Adams is Michel's wife Laurence, the most inscrutable of the lot, though she plays the role straightforwardly as a pragmatic, distracted, slightly irritable woman. I knew her in real life before I saw her onstage as Minka in her venue's 2017 debut production Murderers, and she's crushed every role I've seen her in.
Completing the cast, Jonathan Grafft, as Michel's best friend Paul, is expectedly delightful. I can't pick my favorite role of his, starting with Charlie in the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Flowers for Algernon in 2016. Here, though always laid back, Ann Grafft's real-life husband vacillates between affable and dominant in fascinating combinations. You'll be glad you made time for The Truth. And Zeller even wrote a sequel: The Lie! Go for it, Lora!
The Truth runs at the Black Box Theatre (1623 Fifth Avenue, Moline IL) through August 31, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)284-2350 and visiting TheBlackBoxTheatre.com.
