André lives in his flat where Anne, his daugh­ter, vis­its him. He’d rather his daugh­ter Elise vis­it­ed but she’s busy with her art work. Or is she? And who is Pierre? And why does Lau­ra keep com­ing around?

This show explores real­i­ty and per­cep­tion in a fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion which is famil­iar to many peo­ple. What hap­pens when mem­o­ry starts to dis­ap­pear and when does that become a prob­lem?  It’s an excel­lent script (and trans­la­tion) which tends towards the more comedic side of aging. This doesn’t detract from the strug­gle and emo­tions of the char­ac­ters as they deal with what is hap­pen­ing. Jef­frey Thomas plays André. Thomas gives him a fad­ed sense of his for­mer charm which still shows through as the char­ac­ter los­es his mem­o­ry. Danielle Mason is his daugh­ter Anne with her fussy move­ments at the begin­ning of the show trans­lat­ing to emo­tion­al wor­ry at the end. Ges­ture is impor­tant as char­ac­ters mir­ror each oth­er and swap man­ner­isms. Per­haps it is the rep­e­ti­tion of both words and phys­i­cal­i­ty but this ensem­ble (includ­ing Gavin Ruther­ford, Har­ri­et Preb­ble, Simon Leary and Bron­wyn Turei) feels estab­lished.

The set echoes the progress of the script with a black­out between scenes allow­ing for the stage to be reset. This enhances the sense that time and real­i­ty are strange. It stretch­es,  paus­es, repeats and skips, keep­ing the audi­ence ever so slight­ly unbal­anced.

  • The Father on at Cir­ca The­atre to 11 Novem­ber 2017