The Father (Ustinov Studio)

Britain has long been very insular, rarely bringing the best of contemporary European Theatre stage writing to its stages. So Lawrence Boswell, artistic director of the Ustinov Studio, should be applauded, along with Simon Friend producer for Theatre Royal Bath Productions, in bringing Florian Zeller‘s Moliere award winning The Father to these shores.

Zeller’s play explores the onset of an Alzheimer’s like condition on a dazed and confused Andre and how this affects his relationship with daughter Anne and her husband Pierre. Cleverly it weaves a thread through the action that leaves the audience as puzzled as Andre; without being tricky it makes us question our perception on time and reality. There are question marks running throughout, are the two strangers in the house figments of the old mans imagination, shady con artists or family members wiped from his memory? Is he being physically abused by his step-son? Is he even in his own home?

Many of these questions are left unanswered but never to the frustration of the audience. In the early stages we struggle to keep up, the dots don’t fit, until, about half way in this washes over us and we begin to accept our fate of not getting the answers, like the father accepts his. Links to other plays abound; an old man losing his mind and finding his humanity like Lear, the undertones of violence you find in Pinter.

My reservations are all to do with James MacDonald‘s production. There is a chilly, clinical and detached European aesthetic at the heart of the production, summed up in Miriam Buuether‘s white modernistic flat, minimalistic to begin with, gradually stripped to the bare bone. Functional music plays in scene changes but soon begins to scratch as if a needle is caught on the disc and functionality is breaking down. It feels like pretty bleak stuff. In a production tagged under a black comedy season it is noticeable how few laughs there are on opening night. There is a nagging suspicion the text is funnier than the production Macdonald has carved out.

The detachment trickles down into the performances though the cast assembled are too fine not to bring at least some humanity to the roles. Colin Tierney brings the frustration of the son in law not being able to live fully whilst being stuck with a dependant, Jade Williams flirtily adorable as the carer who treats Andre as a man and not as her patient. Lia Williams Anne, the weight of the world visible on her shoulders, bravely battles on even as her father demands the appearance of his other, favoured daughter who like Godot will never show.

Best of all is Kenneth Cranham‘s Andre, a performance that combines brusqueness and humour, anger and twinkly eyed charm. One moment he is a despotic dictator, the next a scared child weeping into his nursemaids chest. It is a performance as finely judged as the best of those we have come to expect in the Ustinov, but its battling against a production that showcases less humanity than he provides.

These misgivings have to be tempered by the fact I’m still contemplating its mysteries, still debating its meaning. It could be one of those productions where appreciation for it grows over time, not something easily liked but something deeper, more meaningful. Perhaps more mysteries will be answered when Zellier’s The Mother arrives at the Ustinov next year.

The Father plays at the Ustinov Studio until the 15th November.