Review: THE FATHER: A TRAGIC FARCE at Wilbury Theatre Group

Strap on your seat belt as you prepare for an unbelievably emotional ride in Wilbury Theatre Group's "The Father: A Tragic Farce".

Falling deep into the doldrums of Alzheimer's, a family finds itself struggling to keep their 80-year-old father Andre, played incredibly by Tony-award-winning acting quality in Richard Donelly, with the mental capacity to continue to stay with them.  Or is Andre already too far gone and in a nursing home? 

Written by Florian Zeller, Translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Josh Short, "The Father: A Tragic Farce" is never really what it seems.  Scene-after-scene, the audience is treated to incredibly gifted acting with just one question in mind.  Is this the real scene or is this an alternate reality created by this devastating disease?  In the first scene, you find Andre's daughter Anne, played wonderfully by Jeanine Kane, telling her dad that she is in love and moving away to London.  In the next scene, his daughter Anne, this time played by Tanya Anderson Martin, tells Andre that she's brought chicken for dinner.  When Andre asks about her plans to move to London, she just laughs and said nothing like that is in her plans.  Which is the truth?  Do any of us really know?  And that's how it goes in this incredibly-gut-wrenching 90-minute performance with no intermission.

After Andre scares off another nurse, his family asks him is he needs any help, and he refuses, letting them know "I don't need any help, I just want to stay in this apartment."  But then his watch disappears again and he tells his daughter his new nurse that he does not like has taken it.  "People keep helping themselves to my things," Andre argues, "and pretty soon I'll be naked."  But then he finds his watch in the place he always hides it so it doesn't get stolen but the damage was long done.  

Despite the fact that his daughter Anne is taking care of him, Andre is constantly talking about his other daughter Elise, "My favorite daughter", asking why she never comes and visits him.  The audience can feel that there's much more to this Elise then we know.  Has he just forgotten what happened to her or blocked it out or, perhaps, both?

Rounding out the incredible cast includes Jeff Ararat as the man, who becomes violent with Andre, leaving the audience wondering if this might be one of the truths that people with this disease go through because they cannot remember and people get frustrated with that.  Gabrielle McCauley plays Andre's perky nurse Laura and Marvin Novogrodski plays an excellent Pierre, fiance/husband to Anne, who is losing his patience with Andre after canceling their vacation due to another nursing issue with Andre.  "We need to find him another arrangement," Pierre noted to his troubled fiance. "The moment will come, no matter how good she (the new nurse) is, he's still ill Anne."

You can see first hand, the struggles a family goes through dealing with a parent with Alzheimer's and the decisions that must be made to help the ill person while also trying to keep their only family from being torn apart.  Sometime those decisions come too late for both.

Donelly gives us a performance of a lifetime and trust me when I say there is no happy-ending here-how could there be?  Most of the audience walked away quietly with many, including my wife, crying all the way to the car.  Many must have been thinking how they would handle something like this or even how they would even handle the onslaught of Alzheimer's on themselves.  It's such a scary thought no matter which way you look at it, and "The Father: A Tragic Farce" will put you front and center in all of it. 

Photo by Erin X. Smithers

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