Theatre in Review: The Father (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J Friedman Theatre)Frank Langella said in a recent interview that playing King Lear was "a walk in the park" compared to the challenge of the title role in The Father; this may be the understatement of the year. At least the actor playing Lear gets a bit of rest offstage while the supporting characters hatch their various plots; during the 90-minute running time of The Father, the actor is barely offstage and, when present, his job is to chart his character's near-total mental disintegration from dementia. Lear is famed for its mad scene, but The Father is, in essence, one long mad scene, as, bit by bit, André, a cultivated Parisian of a certain age, descends into a mental darkness from which there is no return. Florian Zeller, the playwright, has subtitled The Father "a tragic farce," and while pity and terror are the prevailing emotions, there is a fair amount of laughter, too. When we first meet André, he is a rather dapper, charming fellow, busily driving his daughter, Anne, mad. The woman Anne hired to act as André's caretaker has fled, claiming that he threatened her with a curtain rod. André, who, at first glance, seems perfectly capable of doing for himself, laughs off the entire incident. For all we know, it's a case of a fretful, controlling daughter versus a cranky, independent-minded parent, a power struggle that will strike an amused chord with the baby boomers in the audience. Almost instantly, however, hints of something darker creep in: Anne, in despair, notes that André has driven away three different helpers. He further insists that the woman stole his watch, an argument that is severely undermined when Anne produces the timepiece from the hiding place where André keeps his valuables. André, rattled that his daughter knows about his stash, quickly backtracks and insists that only his vigilance in stowing away the watch saved it from theft. Next, Anne throws her father a curveball, announcing that she is moving to London to be with her new romantic partner. By the end of the conversation, André seems dazed, unable to process what he hears. It's easy to admire how, in a just a few pages of dialogue, Zeller, a French playwright who has recently enjoyed success in the UK, flips our perception of the situation, using a remarkable economy of means to lay bare André's dilemma. In the scenes that follow, the ground under André's feet undergoes a profound shift, leaving him confused and often frightened. A man appears, named Pierre, who says he is Anne's husband. André mentions Anne's English lover and her plans to move, all of which Pierre denies, leaving André worried that he has indiscreetly let slip his daughter's secret. Even more confusing, André is told that he is not in his own apartment, that he is, in fact, living with Anne and Pierre. Then Anne shows up, but she appears to be another woman altogether. The truth is almost never what it seems in The Father, leaving André ever more lost in a maze of misperceptions and clashing realities. Zeller has found a simple, yet stunning, way of putting us in André's position as his ability to sort the imagined from the actual crumbles at a headlong pace. Langella's intensively detailed, utterly unsparing performance captures every hairpin turn of emotion -- he is especially good at evoking the rages that appear with the speed of summer storms when André feels cornered. Even more powerful is the process by which the seemingly self-assured older man is, step by step, reduced to the status of an elderly infant, in need of being held. Doug Hughes' production, employing a series of carefully worked-out illusions, creates a self-contained world of quiet unease. Between each scene, Donald Holder's lighting assaults the audience with blinder cues, followed by a series of chases executed by lighting units embedded in the proscenium. Such an effect is, arguably, based in the text -- we could be watching André's neurons misfiring -- but this is a deliberate bit of sleight of hand: When the lights come up on Scott Pask's elegant bottle-green apartment interior (with its subtle Empire-style touches), something has been changed, often without explanation: a large potted plant added, bookshelves cleared, even -- at one point -- most of the furnishings removed. (As Anne notes to the baffled André, she has always preferred minimalist design.) Zeller and his director have appropriated the techniques of old-fashioned stage thrillers, repurposing them to startling dramatic effect. More than holding her own against Langella's harrowing work is Kathryn Erbe as Anne, who is beginning to buckle under the strain of caring for her father; in the evening's single most chilling moment, she recalls a dream in which she approaches her sleeping father and, gently putting her hands around his neck, begins to squeeze the life out of him. Erbe's performance is a superb tribute to the power of understatement. Brian Avers is an unsettling presence as the fed-up Pierre, who tells André, "Sometimes I wonder if you're doing it on purpose," and then, using carefully coded language, invites André to kill himself. Hannah Cabell provides some warmth as Laura, a new caretaker, who comes on board at the point when it has become a struggle just to get André out of his pajamas in the morning. Charles Borland and Kathleen McNenny are fine as the man and woman who come and go without explanation, often assuming the names of the other characters. Catherine Zuber's costumes and Fitz Patton's original music and sound design are also solidly executed. The Father is notable for introducing us to a fine new playwright who, in his coolly restrained way, makes us look at an illness that may be for many in the audience their single greatest fear. What you're most likely to remember about the experience is the haunting look of fear and incomprehension in Langella's eyes as André slips further and further away from reality. This is a monumental performance, a modern Lear, a lion in winter no longer sure whom he is raging at, or why. -- David Barbour 
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