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Pasadena Playhouse, Los AngelesThe actor brings out the dark humour in Zeller’s modern classic about a man with dementia, fluctuating from absurdity to despair in a heartbeat

It is more than five years since Florian Zeller’s refracted drama about dementia had its English-language premiere at the Ustinov in Bath. That production, with Kenneth Cranham as the disorientated André, had three runs in London; Frank Langella took the part on Broadway, and Anthony Hopkins plays André in a forthcoming film version, directed by Zeller. The French playwright has since rounded off a family trilogy with The Mother and The Son, also translated by Christopher Hampton, along with several other meditations on marriage. But it is The Father, with its shades of King Lear, that has become Zeller’s signature piece, and it boasts a formidably challenging lead role, fluctuating between fury and fragility in a heartbeat.
In this Los Angeles production directed by Jessica Kubzansky, Alfred Molina – who is younger than his predecessors in the part by some years – seizes upon Zeller’s subtitle for the play: “a tragic farce”. Such was the overwhelming climactic pathos of Cranham’s performance in the original production, it is easy to forget the bustling humour of the play’s opening minutes, which give a double sense to André’s bewildered cry that “there’s something funny going on”. Continue reading...