Last autumn, I went to an improv evening at London’s famous Comedy Store. Paul Merton and his wife, Suki Webster, were the organisers of the event, but what particularly drew me to it was the special guest, Stephen Mangan. Merton and Mangan form a glorious impromptu double act each time they appear together on Have I Got News for You and Mangan’s crisp comic timing and wholehearted commitment to each new challenge, no matter how absurd, were even more of a delight when viewed live.
This summer, at a West End theatre a mere couple of minutes’ walk from the Comedy Store, Mangan is headlining a revival of Florian Zeller’s Paris-set comedy-drama about adultery, The Truth. This quadruple threat of an actor-comedian-presenter-writer has been a constant on our screens and stages for 25 years now, making his name initially as Adrian Mole in The Cappuccino Years for the BBC. Many remember him most fondly as the arrogant Guy Secretan from the anarchic Channel Four comedy Green Wing. Now, Mangan is finally morphing from an integral part of the ensemble to a star attraction. About time too, I’d say.
Comedy-drama is, of course, the genre in which Mangan excels. This will be attested by anyone who lapped up the three series of the BBC’s splendid legal/family drama The Split, in which Mangan’s Nathan Stern grappled with the challenging reality of a long marriage to Nicola Walker’s Hannah Defoe. The Split featured betrayal, regret and repentance – not to mention a selection of the most enviable kitchen islands ever seen. Mangan’s expressions shifted characterfully between hangdog and hopeful, as we viewers shifted between hoping for a reconciliation to believing in the affirmative power of a fresh start. (Let us not forget, either, that Mangan was Tony Award-nominated for the Broadway transfer of the Old Vic’s hit revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests.)
