The best work of the year

- The Guardian -

Two stories taking form on one stage

<The Father Le Père>, <The Mother La Mère>

The play has been nominated for France’s Prix Goncourt, one of the three major international literary prizes, and won the Molière Award, the highest honor in French theatre, as well as the British Olivier Award and the Tony Award in America in 2016. Florian Zeller, a young and talented playwright, coined a new word, “Zellerist”, and has grabbed the attention of the French literary world. The Korean audiences can now experience his masterpieces <The Father Le Père> and <The Mother La Mère> at the same time, providing a unique and fresh experience. The stage is one. However, this one stage produces two different but similar stories. The time which you can meet this isolated father and solitary mother on the same stage is not long enough.

This new work, sweeping the world, will meet Korean audiences

for the first time through Park Geun-hyung, playing the father.

Premiering in Paris, France in 2012, and performed at the Theatre Royal Bath in the UK in 2014, <The Father Le Père> won the Molière Award, also known as the French Tony Award, for best play in 2014, and was made into a film titled <Floride>. Winning both the British Olivier Award and the American Tony Award in 2016, it was favorably reviewed as “the best work of the year”. <The Father Le Père>, a new sensational work sweeping the world, will go up before Korean audiences with Park Geun-hyung returning to the Myeongdong Theater for the first time in 40 years. Park Geun-hyung, portraying an elderly father who is losing himself and giving into unknown fears, overwhelmed the audience with his outstanding and sincere performance, filling the stage with his passionate acting.

It’s all routine, no longer new.

But for him, every day is a new and strange

In today’s aged society, we are all familiar with the term Alzheimer. However, for the Father, every day is a new and confusing. Blinking once, a strange woman approaches him claiming that she is his daughter. Blinking again, a strange man approaches him and gets angry, saying that he is his son-in-law. Even the audience is thrown off by these scenes; what is real and what is not? Now is the time for us to hug our father, who is struggling with memory loss and deep emptiness.

“It feels like all my leaves are falling down, one by one, one by one.”

Synopsis

André, a former tap dancer in his eighties, lives together with Anne, his daughter, and Antoine, his son-in-law. No, he was actually an engineer. His daughter Anne and her lover Pierre are living together in London.  He is always in his pajamas and keeps checking that his watch is still on his wrist, always worrying that someone is going to steal it. Suddenly, a strange man approaches him, saying that he is Anne’s boyfriend, and slaps him in the face. A strange woman comes to him, saying that she is Anne, his daughter. He is confused. People keep changing, and they keep saying different things. Even his furniture seemed to change places. He gets frustrated……