Powerful stuff.
Made me feel it from the perspective of both the elderly father (John Bell) who's suffering dementia and his adult sister (Anita Hegh) who has taken on the thankless work of caring for him. The subjective reality experienced by the father was done very well - it's difficult to stage the kind of slippages through time (ellipses, back and forths, repetitions), indistinguishable mixings of reality and fantasy, and identity confusions that afflict the father here, and that was done largely effectively here.
Reading a couple of the glowing reviews of the play from overseas makes me suspect that much of that is down to the play as written (Florian Zeller) and that this production might be more workmanlike than inspired - although Bell's turn is very real in the best way - but even still, it was well worthwhile.
(w/ Erandathie, Cass and Tamara (and Laura F's sis, Ness))
Made me feel it from the perspective of both the elderly father (John Bell) who's suffering dementia and his adult sister (Anita Hegh) who has taken on the thankless work of caring for him. The subjective reality experienced by the father was done very well - it's difficult to stage the kind of slippages through time (ellipses, back and forths, repetitions), indistinguishable mixings of reality and fantasy, and identity confusions that afflict the father here, and that was done largely effectively here.
Reading a couple of the glowing reviews of the play from overseas makes me suspect that much of that is down to the play as written (Florian Zeller) and that this production might be more workmanlike than inspired - although Bell's turn is very real in the best way - but even still, it was well worthwhile.
(w/ Erandathie, Cass and Tamara (and Laura F's sis, Ness))
