Drama: "The Mother" & "The Father" (Florian Zeller)

[DracoM]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094sd4k

Astonishing performance by Gina McKee.
Surprised no-one seems to have listened?

'The Father' next Sunday.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Our Sunday afternoon/evening wasn't all that lightweight - a concert performance of Gotterdamerung. On the drive home (1 hour) we listened to this play - well, until we arrived home. Yes a gripping performance from Gina McKee - a tour de force, and thanks for this post, it prompted me to listen to the last 15 minutes - playing on the iPlayer as I speak.

[Nick Armstrong]

Astonishing performance by Gina McKee.
Surprised no-one seems to have listened?

I did, just didn't get round to posting. Agreed - amazing, and a fascinating play generally. Will listen to this Sunday's companion piece.

[Nick Armstrong]

Finally got around to listening to The Father this weekend. Enthralling work, plunging the listener into perceiving events through the deteriorating mind's eye of the central figure, brilliantly done by Kenneth Cranham. Narrative shifts, gaps and repeats give one a subjective sense of disorientation and confusion - in one amazing instance, months have obviously gone by between two consecutive sentences spoken by one character.

And I loved the technique of the Bach keyboard music (used in all the scene breaks) being subject to progressively more intrusive glitches and distortions, tiny to start with (I though it was a split-second transmission fault) but then increasingly echoing, almost commenting on, the central character's progression into dementia.

Do try and catch in the remaining 8 days on the iPlayer via the link above. Top drawer, like its companion piece The Mother the previous week.

[french frank]

I take it the list of credits is a subtle reference to the mental confusions?