The Pittsburgh Tatler: In his Hamburg Dramaturgy, the 18th-century German playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing claimed for theater, above all other arts, the capacity to arouse in an audience member a feeling that he termed Mitleid. That word, if you were to translate it literally, would be something like “suffering with”; Lessing theorized that drama achieved its greatest effect when spectators found themselves in a state of Mitleid with the character or characters in the play.
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Wow. The concept of “The Father” and the method for its execution are so strong that I felt heavy just by reading the review. I think one of the most effective general characteristics of the show is the fact that the audience’s perception of this man with dementia is shaped and motivated by the man’s own perception. In my own family and in many others, I’ve seen older people with conditions related to memory loss dismissed and pushed to the background. They’re old, they’re sick, they lose their memory-- it almost seems like a natural progression. But the emotionally demanding experience of waking up to a world and people who are different every day is far from natural, as “The Father” emphasizes through altering of time, space, and characters. I was also fascinated by how the scenic design progresses throughout the course of the show with the father’s dementia. While it’s more feasible for people, even loved ones, to convincingly change over time, there’s an even more heartbreaking level to losing touch with one’s own static home. I am completely taken with this show and am eager to look into more of Florian Zeller’s work.
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