The Father

by Florian Zeller translated by Christopher Hampton

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 7 October 2015

The play is directed by James Macdonald and is designed by Miriam Buether. It stars Kenneth Cranham as Andre, an 80-year-old retired engineer, and Claire Skinner as Anne, his daughter. Kirsty Oswald plays Laura, a care worker, and Nicholas Gleaves plays Pierre, Anne's partner.

The subject is the onset of dementia, and Zeller has achieved the remarkable feat of presenting the situation through the confusion of Andre's mind. It appears that he is in his own flat being visited by his daughter after an altercation with a carer. However, our understanding is soon destabilised by the appearance of two other characters who contradict Anne's statements, and then by Anne's own assertion that Andre has in fact moved to her flat. The techniques of theatrical trickery have been used to disconcerting effect in illuminating the crippling uncertainties of dementia as it may be experienced by a sufferer.

The scenes are generally short, and are broken by sudden blackouts and the playing of piano pieces that become increasingly fractured. Gradually, the furniture in the creepily immaculate flat is removed, until only white walls remain. Some scenes are replayed or expanded, finally making it possible for the audience to understand what has happened to Andre, even as his own understanding fails completely and he is reduced to crying out for the comfort of his mummy.

The progressively exhausted Anne, hoping to cope but finding the sheer time involved as taxing as having to listen to her father's callous expressions of preference for another daughter who never appears (and who is probably dead), is movingly portrayed by Claire Skinner,while her less than sympathetic partner points out the only possible resolution with a cool detachment that his hardly appealing. In the meantime Anne employs Laura as a new carer, who is at first charmed by Andre, but whose breezy attitude is soon crushingly called to account as patronising by Andre himself. He may be losing his memory, but not his sense of entitlement.

Kenneth Cranham delivers a masterly performance as Andre, catching the character's original strength and authority, but also his mental confusion and the cunning whereby he hopes to conceal it, the charm of his old self and the brutal selfishness of uninhibited speaking, and finally the awful sense of bewilderment and loss as the disease progresses. 

The playwright has also noticed that this situation, while immensely painful and demanding to experience both for the sufferer and for those around him or her, provokes an uneasy comedy for those not directly concerned - in this case, the audience. To some extent we are wrongfooted into laughter, just as we are wrongfooted by the juxtaposition of the scenes, but this serves to give us a deeper insight into a problem that frightens us all.