Review: Isä

Father – a masterful interpretation of the life of a person with a memory disorder and their relatives

The Father of the Helsinki City Theatre is an eloquent play. Somewhere around the ten-minute mark, just when the viewer has made themselves comfortable in their little seat, they get confused. Who is talking now, is this true, how did this go? And this is precisely the genius of Florian Zeller’s play, which has collected awards around the world, it brings the viewer into the world of a memory disorder’s confused mind and gives an embarrassing feeling of the relative’s situation. Oh, relatives.

An inexhaustible resource that answers a call from a person with a memory disorder 12 times a day, takes care of banking, remembers medicines, reminds them of medicines and lulls their own parents to sleep with a lullaby if the father asks for it.

A family member takes a person with a memory disorder into home accommodation when they cannot cope on their own and there is no other place. The family member stretches and their other relationships crack. A person with a memory disorder is in constant distress. He does not always feel that his home is his own. He is scared and anxious. He trembles inside and out.

The Father of the Helsinki City Theatre tells about all this nakedly. The actors’ tense characters are just as exhausted as the people around the memory disorder are at their end. The most amazing of them is Jari Pehkonen’s interpretation of a father with a memory disorder. Jari Pehkonen does a masterful job in which the actor is in his character in such a way that the viewer only realizes at the end that he has been looking at the actor, not a sick old man. Vuokko Hovatta as a daughter is just as humanly impatient and painful as a daughter can be when the father-child relationship has been turned upside down. Love becomes cruel when it is ravaged by it.

Others say to the father with a memory disorder “do you remember, do you remember, don’t you remember”. The father cries as the leaves of his life fall from around him. It’s touching. The viewer sees their own future if they dare to look. And if not your own, at least the future of your own parents. The play stops the heart – the power of art is so well done.