Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. Half stars fall between the ratings
Richard Delahaye as André has no idea who the
woman played by Sandra Haynes is who is being spoken to by his daughter
Anne, played by Sharon Clayton. She's certainly not the carer
Laura!
The Father
Highbury Theatre Centre
*****
Every so often along comes a performance that
reminds you what a magical place theatre can be and Richard Delahaye
provides such a moment, he is simply magnificent as André in Florian
Zeller’s brilliant play.
It is a play about old age, the fate of all those
who are fortunate enough to reach it – and a fate whose only advantage,
at times, is that it is better than the alternative.
André is in his 70s in a hopeless fight for his
independence and sanity against the ravages of time . . . and dementia.
Dementia. It is the fear of everyone heading into
their twilight years. The young forget what you ask them to do because
their minds are full of so many, far more interesting things. The old
forget things because . . . well they just do. And then there are those
lost to dementia . . . remember Shakespeare’s final words in his seven
ages of man . . . sans everything.
It is a condition that touches a nerve or stirs a
memory of so many of the audience, but the play is not some sort of
study or examination of dementia, this is theatre, we are invited to
experience dementia, live it from inside what has become of André’s
mind.
André charms Leah Fennell's carer Laura,
the pretty one, with Anne looking on
On the face of it, it could be harrowing and
grim, but it’s not. It is compelling, even gripping theatre. We see the
world through André’s eyes, a world confused, constantly changing,
leaving him, and us, bewildered, with strangers arriving and
disappearing in the flat.
The play sets out to confound us. Instead of
following a linear narrative, beginning, middle, end, we are left to
work out what is real, what is now, what is then. We are given a mystery
to solve.
The play is set over several years, or maybe
months or weeks. It might just be yesterday and today, or maybe just
this morning or even just now in real time . . . André keeps losing his
watch, or it keeps being stolen, so he can’t keep track of time any
more, so neither can we.
When we open he is living in a flat in Paris and
we discover has just upset yet another carer to the point she is
refusing to return. She is the third carer to have been driven away and
his daughter Anne is at her wit’s end.
It is an emotional performance from Sharon
Clayton who is desperately trying to balance the love for her father,
making sure he is cared for, and the equal demands of her own life and
work and her relationship with her partner Pierre in the shape of Ron
Parker. Pierre seems to have a less than easy relationship with André.
Anne is on a hiding to nothing, the demands and
needs of her father increasing to a point where balance is impossible to
achieve, while André’s declarations he is managing just fine on his own,
are ringing more and more hollow.
Roles reversed: a daughter comforting her
once strong father with Ron Parker's Pierre in the background
Hovering around we have Alan Groucott as . . .
well, as some bloke who appears, a complete stranger, who claims to be
Anne’s husband, or something like that, and Sandra Haynes as . . . well,
she says she is Anne, or did she say she was Laura the carer who came
yesterday? No, that was Leah Fennell as Laura, the pretty one, she was
the one who came yesterday, not the new one who came today.
André told Laura, the pretty one, how he used to
be a dancer, even giving a demonstration . . . or was he in a circus?
Anne said he was an engineer.
There is tension amid the mystery as well. For
instance, is Pierre, both of them in this case, secretly abusing André
when Anne is not there? And is Anne living in Paris or London? Then
there is Elise, André’s other daughter. Laura looks a lot like her,
don’t you think? Now why does Elise never visit and it’s a long time
since André heard from her? And whose flat is it? And what happened to
the chap with the chicken?
Delahaye becomes André, every hesitant moment,
desperately fumbling for words, for recollection, for sanity. It is a
huge part, a lot to remember and even more to forget, and as anyone who
has been close to a sufferer will know, it is oh so painfully accurate.
There is no ranting or raving, he is not a doddery old man whose mind is
away with the fairies, he even mocks the very idea that anyone could
even consider him a touch loony. On the face of it he is normal,
battling an ever more hostile world.
After all, he still sees himself as master of his
own universe, but it is a world ever shrinking and changing around him, the
familiar has faded and he is no longer in control. He is still, as Laura
declared, charming, still funny, at times, still amiable, if a little
infuriating, still Anne’s father. When as his twilight fades towards
night and he says tearfully “I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves – one
by one” your heart goes out to him. He ends his telling soliloquy with
“When the last leaf falls - what will be left of me?”
It is a moving moment in a moving and emotionally
powerful play which mirrors André’s disorientation forcing us to
experience the same confusion and frustration. The reality of one moment
becoming the uncertainty of the next. Even the structure is fragmented
into short sometimes connected, sometimes not, scenes along timelines
that may or may not exist.
There are echoes of King Lear in the story; both
Lear and André struggle with their loss of control, confusion, and
perceived betrayal of a daughter, both make a final speech of
resignation about their own frailities.
Both are once strong fathers becoming vulnerable
as their minds deteriorate, both blurring the fine line between reality
and illusion.
Malcolm Robertshaw’s set is functional rather
than designed to provide an extra, inanimate character as we have seen
created in many productions, which was a missed opportunity, and it has set changes carried out by faceless figures which could benefit by
being slicker to help with momentum, which no doubt will happen as the run continues.
The Father has a strong cast with father
and daughter in particular providing deeply moving moments. It is a wonderful, immersive, very human
story which in some way or another affects us all, challenging our
perceptions and tugging at our emotions. Theatre at its best. Directed
by Claire Armstrong Mills The Father will be seeking reality to
09-03-25.
