I have never seen a play which brought out such an emotive response from me. Florian Zeller’s ‘The Father’, winner of the 2014 Moliere Award for Best Play, was a triumph. Artistic director Lawrence Boswell and producer Simon Friend should be applauded for bringing the play to our shores. I saw the performance at the Ustinov Studio in Bath and was incredibly impressed. It was an unforgettable experience. One which sparked fiery debates in my Contemporary Performance class. ‘The Father’ is a play shown entirely through the eyes of a man with an Alzheimer type illness. It follows him through his life, living with his daughter and her husband and also alone. It was remarkably controlled and what could have easily turned into chaos stayed on a strong and intriguing course. It was the first of anything like that I’d ever seen before and I was brought into a new world of theatre. The performance itself was episodic in structure, showing the scenes in an out of order, disarrayed, fashion, to represent the out of order, disarrayed state of the father’s mind. Which is why I would find it incredibly hard to describe this play to someone, as it doesn’t follow a single rational order. Of course we have to remember that when you have an unreliable narrator things are difficult to rationalise. It was troubling, playful, intriguing and touching. I was incredibly touched, as was most of the audience I sat with. I was not the only person in tears at the end. The play, though touching such a sensitive subject, was a black comedy, and this was also evident. There were moments of real humour. Though as an audience member, you do wonder whether you should be laughing at certain points. But this black humour is completely diminished at the end of the play, when you are left with an uncomfortable and seriously emotional scene. I felt absolute sympathy for out protagonist, and absolute outrage at the fact his daughter had committed him to a home, even though it was needed for his safety, and absolute outrage that at the end, he was all alone. There is something incredibly unsettling about an old man calling out helplessly for his “mummy”. As a production it was very creatively in tuned. As the performance progressed which each scene proceeding towards the end, a piece of furniture was removed until the final scene where you see the father in a bare, plain, room, in a home he’s been placed in by his daughter due to his deteriorating health. What I wonder now, is whether the blank stage is also representative of his state of mind at the end of the play.
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