Florian Zeller’s devastating play about a stubborn, ageing, mentally-degenerating father is given appropriate treatment by veteran dramatic actor Josep Maria Pou. The award-winning play, translated from French into Catalan, wipes the floor with the hammy performance given in 2016 at the same theatre by Argentine movie actor Héctor Alterio. 

Pou (78) believes that the pandemic has brought extra resonance to Zeller’s 2012 accessible play about “growing old”, in which we are dragged with the protagonist on a humiliating descent into dementia. While a recent Oscar-winning film version featuring Anthony Hopkins was perceived by some critics as claustrophobic and stagy, El Pare, under the direction of Josep Maria Mestres, goes for a certain flimsiness and sparsity of set that contributes to a growing sense of dislocation and unease. The protagonist Andreu, a former-engineer – clearly used to dominating in his own family – rages at the gaslighting of his own mind; his confusion of family faces and furniture placements, past and present, appear at first as light comedy but then rapidly crumble into fear. The wristwatch is a motif that seems to steady him, yet offers little in the way of stability as the hours and days jumble.    

Victòria Pagès plays Andreu’s daughter Anna, Rosa Renom, Josep Julien, Pep Pla and Mireia Illamola also feature; but they seem rather prop-like, paling before Pou’s presence in pyjamas and slippers. The memory of another daughter, a favourite, haunts him; more real than the real.