{"id":198,"date":"2020-11-08T13:21:14","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T13:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=198"},"modified":"2020-11-08T13:21:14","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T13:21:14","slug":"the-father-by-florian-zeller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2020\/11\/08\/the-father-by-florian-zeller\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Father” by Florian Zeller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Translated from the French by Christopher Hampton<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a big screen adaptation forthcoming later in 2020\/early 2021 I thought I\u2019d revisit French novelist and playwright, Florian Zeller\u2019s incredible play Le <\/em>P\u00e8re<\/em>, (or in English, The Father<\/em>). Zeller makes bold, creative decisions with this play which explores the Dementia experience of an older Frenchman named Andr\u00e9. Andr\u00e9 becomes the lens through which we see the world. The characters, dialogue, time frame and set of the play are all deliberately ambiguous as Zeller attempts to capture the confusion of Andr\u00e9\u2019s experience on stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play itself is set in what Andr\u00e9 takes to be his Parisian apartment, although it is also at times his daughter\u2019s apartment. Zeller\u2019s stage instructions convey the confused nature of this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSimultaneously the same room and a different room. Some furniture has disappeared: as the scenes proceed, the set sheds certain element, until it becomes an empty, neutral space.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenes repeat with slight variations, additions and subtractions to the dialogue. This makes it incredibly difficult to follow any linear time pattern through the play. The audience is catapulted into Andr\u00e9\u2019s world where time means very little anymore. The past is the present is the past and memories repeatedly come back to haunt him, whilst other details, like the death of his younger daughter, seem to be permanently misplaced. Most worryingly of all Zeller employs different actors to play Andr\u00e9\u2019s daughter and her partner so when he does not recognise Anne or Pierre, the audience understands his confusion because we do not recognise them either. These people might be speaking Anne and Pierre\u2019s lines, but they no longer look anything like them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Father<\/em> is a simple and yet hugely ambitious attempt at embodying the Dementia experience in a piece of art and allowing it to be accessible to the audience members as they watch the play. It incites a feeling of confusion, disorientation and frustration not unlike Dementia itself. However, it is also shot through with moments of heartfelt emotion and beautiful, poignant language such as the section towards the end of the play, when Andr\u00e9, greatly diminished by his illness and the confusing experiences he\u2019s been through, likens himself to an Autumnal tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel as if\u2026 I feel as if I\u2019m losing all my leaves, one after another.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so looking forward to seeing Florian Zeller\u2019s own film adaptation of The Father<\/em> later in the year and am confident that the all star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman and Rufus Sewell will do justice to this powerful play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Father was published by Faber and Faber in 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from the French by Christopher Hampton With a big screen adaptation forthcoming later in 2020\/early 2021 I thought I\u2019d revisit French novelist and playwright, Florian Zeller\u2019s incredible play Le P\u00e8re, (or in English, The Father). Zeller makes bold, creative decisions with this play which explores the Dementia experience of an older Frenchman named Andr\u00e9. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,6,27,9,28,19],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-family","tag-french","tag-man","tag-theatre","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}