Dark comedy impressive and terrifying
French playwright of the moment Florian Zeller calls The
Father a “tragic farce,” which, in theory, makes sense.
It is steeped in misunderstandings, mistaken identities, will-they-or-won’t-they courtships and an onslaught of entrances and exits; thus, the comedic mishaps of a farce.
Then the tragedy turns what would be funny in a farce into a source of fear and frustration, which is why The Father has been so widely acclaimed.
It expresses the mishaps through the perspective of a man with dementia, his pained caretaker daughter and her exasperated partner.
Since its Paris premiere in 2012, its English-language U.K. premiere in 2014 and its Broadway run in 2016, The Father has impressed and terrified critics and audiences in the way it constantly shifts the rules of scenes: information received at one point is outright denied at another, places and faces change without warning and behaviours swing from calm to violent in an instant — all delivered by the people around aging father Andre with the measured patience of someone sane speaking to someone unstable, or a parent speaking to a child.
The desired effect is for us to share Andre’s discomfort and confusion, distorting what we think is reality; it’s theatre gaslighting to build empathy for our main character.
Though Zeller calls The Father a dark comedy, the tragedy often wallops any potential laughs into submission, even with lovable Canadian TV actor Eric Peterson as Andre in the current Coal Mine Theatre production.
A late-stage replacement for Nicholas Campbell due to illness, Peterson has the benefit of having performed the role at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius last fall — otherwise it’s hard to imagine him pulling off Andre’s monologues of unfinished sentences and 180-degree turns of thought and mood so impressively well.
But even in his most lighthearted moments, trying to impress young nurse Laura (Oyin Oladejo) with an invented past life as a tap dancer, Peterson’s Andre has a wide-eyed, bigsmiled leer that suggests an inappropriate threat. On the other hand, that same scene unleashes Andre’s mean side as he rails against his dutiful daugh- ter Anne (Trish Fagan). Peterson can’t quite summon the brutal delivery needed to make this change as extreme as it needs to be.
He is best at capturing Andre’s childlike helplessness, culminating in a moving final breakdown.
Fagan, a welcome sight back on a Toronto stage, is solid as Anne. She’s patient and evenkeeled to balance her father’s erratic behaviour and her partner Pierre’s (Beau Dixon) anger. Even so, her martyrdom becomes wearying and we wish for her to, just once, unbutton her cardigan and let loose.
And that brings up another issue with The Father: Zeller’s interest in portraying the French bourgeoisie with beautiful homes and clothes, keeping their emotions stifled in polite company.
The Father plays into the stereotype that dementia is saddest when the wealthy, beautiful and white suffer from it. Even with the best performers and solid direction and design, there’s a question of why we’re being immersed inside this particular family.
Perhaps this is merely the reaction of someone who doesn’t have a close relationship to dementia and aging parents — or doesn’t yet. Zeller’s concept of conveying the feeling of losing your mind and submitting to the orders of others plays into our widespread fear of aging, a timely lesson with our aging population.