Father review – a harrowing, slapstick look at care-home life

Barbican, London
Peeping Tom tackle old age with originality, warmth and humour in the second part of their eerie family-themed trilogy

Last year they tackled mums, now attention turns to dad. The Belgian dance-theatre company Peeping Tom follow up their hit show Mother with the second work in a family-themed trilogy. Fathers may be the focus, but really this seems like a show about ageing, the confusion and indignity of losing your agency and your concrete grasp on the world. Before us is a desolate hall with dim lights and trestle tables. It slowly dawns that we’re in an old people’s home, albeit one where nice middle-aged ladies play drums in jazz bands and a woman’s head pops out of a saucepan of soup.

This oddball company’s work is made of visual jokes, rubber-bodied dance and an eerie not-quite-normality that is all entertainingly surreal. The sense of shifting reality suits this theme – the questioning of memory, the slipping of the self – and family dynamics, as ever, make rich material for the stage. Father picks up the frustrations of relationships where tempers are quick to rise (“You always ask the same questions!”), and the tenderness, exasperation and impatience of dealing with elderly parents.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2G3apZg