André’s adult daughter has strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. Then she seems to have dark hair and hazel eyes. She’s taller too. She tells André that he’s living in her apartment, but he knows that he isn’t. She seems to have a boyfriend; then she doesn’t.Florian Zeller’s 90-minute play “The Father,” translated from the French by Christopher Hampton, takes a cool forensic look – and sometimes a bleakly funny one too – at the fracturing of André’s memory under the burden of Alzheimer’s. Roles are switched between different actors. Information is contradicted. Chronology is overturned. It soon becomes clear that we are witnessing André’s confusion through his own eyes, and it’s a painful place to be.A similar concept was used in Christopher Nolan’s memory-loss movie “Memento,” but there the device buckled under the weight of a classic revenge plot. Zeller avoids that problem by ditching plot pretty much entirely, and it’s both the play’s strength and weakness. Once you’ve grasped the ‘disorientation of reality’ idea, you’ve got the whole conceptual package: there are no further surprises. On the plus side it means there are no distractions from the central premise, which is pushed to its terrifying pathological end.It also means you get to concentrate on the acting, which is superb. Kenneth Cranham delivers a white-knuckle performance as André, now charming, now heartless, now pathetic. Sometimes he cowers and trembles in shame at his decrepit state. Sometimes there are flashes of ghastly selfishness, brutal frankness, comical pompousness. His final dissolution is heartbreaking.The strain placed on his daughter Anne is realized with enormous variety by Claire Skinner (and occasionally an excellent Rebecca Charles). She mixes utter weariness with attempts at tenderness, and the constant tension is visible on her pinched, drawn face. Nicholas Gleaves (Pierre), Kirsty Oswald (Laura) and Jim Sturgeon (Man) complete a cast with no weak links.Director James Macdonald (whose production transfers to the West End from a previous run at the Theatre Royal Bath) sets the action in a high-ceilinged Parisian apartment. During short blackouts between scenes, more and more items of furniture disappear until there’s almost nothing left in the room. It creates a cool, unsettling atmosphere which serves the play’s surrealist edge well.“The Father” has already won a Moliére Award in France, and has been nominated for a UK Theatre Award. Other nominations will doubtless be heading in its direction. Let’s hope they pave the way for a another of Zeller’s Parisian hits to cross the channel: his sly boulevard comedy “The Truth,” about adultery and lies, looks like a lot of fun. Can’t wait.“The Father” is at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End.
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