The New York Times - Highly Recommended
"'The Father' offers one of the most disorienting experiences in town. Yet, as directed by Doug Hughes, this production exudes a cool clarity that borders on the clinical....Mr. Langella impressively played King Lear several years ago, but it's here he nails the rage, pathos and cruelty behind that titanic part...Mr. Langella bravely makes sure that André remains an unsympathetic soul, even as his condition inspires an aching empathy."
NY Daily News - Somewhat Recommended
"Doug Hughes' direction in the Manhattan Theatre Club staging cuts both ways. He guides the fine ensemble through the play's tricky contours...But between-scene blackouts nag. Violins saw noisily. Lights flash. Presumably it's to suggest brain connections short-circuiting. But it leads to diminishing returns. Fortunately, though, Langella is forever intriguing."
Hollywood Reporter - Somewhat Recommended
"As a visual metaphor for the advancing isolation of an unraveling mind surrendering to dementia, the staging is certainly eloquent. It's matched by the powerful work of Langella, conveying the painful freefall from eroding dignity into infantilized helplessness...But French playwright Florian Zeller's drama is a stubbornly unemotional experience, its approach too cerebral and distancing to achieve the shattering impact that the performances demand."
Vulture - Somewhat Recommended
"Langella gets so close to strip-mining the core of his gifts that you think he may cave in, or that you will. It's a must-see performance. 'The Father,' though, is only a might-see play, more of a vehicle than a destination...The play defies logic at times...If 'The Father' gets only partway across the ocean on its own steam, Hughes has tugged it near to shore, and Langella docks it every night. What he does to the play is almost as pleasurable and improving as what he does to the audience."
NY1 - Highly Recommended
"At 78, Langella not only holds the stage he owns it. And when you're not hanging on his every line and gesture, you may stop for a moment to try and study how he does it. But don't bother because his performances are seamless and when he slips into a role, the actor evaporates leaving no trace...Under Doug Hughes taut direction, the emotional toll builds to a devastating conclusion."
Variety - Recommended
"Zeller's disturbing drama is a highly personal study of a proud old man's inexorable mental deterioration that is easy to admire, but quite painful to watch...There's no real drama to the basic structure of the play, just the ruthless forward movement of one man's inevitable fate...Director Hughes handles the material with sensitivity by taking Andre's distorted perceptions of reality as his own."
Newsday - Somewhat Recommended
"How I wish I could say that Florian Zeller's play lived up to the depths of its worthy ambition — much less to Langella's silken heartbreak of a performance...All the other characters just feel like two-dimensional props for Langella's performance. Hughes uses a flash of glaring light between scenes. The effect becomes more irritating than theatrical in a play that, for all its big intentions, never really touches the indignities and profundity of self-loss."
amNY - Recommended
"'The Father' is not an enjoyable play by any stretch of the imagination. It leaves you feeling uncomfortable, roughed up and exposed. But it is a dramatically effective and culturally important one that forces the audience to see the world through the eyes of someone with dementia and identify with him. It should be mandatory viewing for anyone who knows a person with dementia."
Wall Street Journal - Recommended
"Each scene undermines what had been taken for granted before. We become disoriented, baffled, unable to identify the past or even the present...The dismantling of dramatic reality treats dementia as an intellectual process, not as an emotional one. But Mr. Langella corrects the balance. We cannot help but be caught up in his suspicion, first when he believes 'there is something funny going on,' and finally, searingly, when it isn't even clear to him to whom it has all been happening."
NorthJersey - Somewhat Recommended
"A fairly clever but chilly drama...Langella has a juicy role in André...But even the masterful Langella has difficulty making André's dementia emotionally vivid, in a play written, directed (by Doug Hughes) and acted in a restrained, formalistic style...At the very end, Zeller tries to capture the agony of dementia. The play's final image is striking, but the emotion seems an add-on, not something emerging naturally from the story we've seen."
Washington Post - Not Recommended
"Florian Zeller's gimmicky disease play about aging and dementia...That the one dimension is inhabited so robustly by Frank Langella is the sole element elevating the piece above the desolately routine. But his presence is not nearly enough to overcome the playwright's overly obvious conceits...As a demonstration of how Alzheimer's runs its course, Hughes's production has some merit...However, 'The Father' is mundane."
Time Out New York - Recommended
"The play keeps its audience in a continuous state of disorientation, smudging the lines between reality and misperception...Such theatrical tricks are central to the depiction of André's crumbling state of mind—more than the dialogue or the characters, who are difficult to know very well. But this production has another special effect in the imposing form of Langella himself...'The Father' may not be deep, but its depiction of André is effective and sad."
The Wrap - Somewhat Recommended
"The beauty and horror of seeing Florian Zeller's play is that we're taken inside the head of a man who's losing his mind...Zeller has underwritten the supporting characters, and director Hughes is wise to keep those performances very understated...Zeller tells his story from Andre's viewpoint, so it is bewildering — and not in a good way — when the playwright includes scenes that have the daughter conversing with other characters in Andre's absence."
Financial Times - Somewhat Recommended
"Langella pivots skilfully between Lear-like torment and a lighter comic register...Though never less than affecting, the play itself feels a little neat, however. Once we've twigged what's going on, 'The Father' doesn't offer any further puzzles or surprises...Zeller has written a well-made play on a universally significant subject that stops short of following its protagonist into the darkest corners of mental breakdown."
The Guardian - Recommended
"With the exception of a few unnecessary soliloquies, the dialogue is often powerful in its simplicity and Zeller effectively communicates a sense of existential horror lurking just below everyday chatter. Unfortunately, the translation sounds more London-ish than Parisian...Parts of the play can feel somewhat too pat, as though Zeller is amusing himself in finding out how many ways he can alter reality using the familiar mechanisms of the stage."
CurtainUp - Recommended
"If you appreciate what a masterful actor can do with a difficult part, you won't want to miss 'The Father' because Langella is on stage for most of its 90 minutes. Is Zeller's play as unmissable? Not quite so much...Though Langella and this production pretty much justify all the hype, the twilight zone setup tends to be be as confusing as it is clever. Consequently, you may leave the theater full of admiration for the acting and staging, but without having being really pulled all the way in."
Talkin Broadway - Somewhat Recommended
"Director Hughes and his sublime star force you to feel this from the inside out in ways that will give you a new appreciation of what it means to literally lose yourself...Langella and Hughes ensure that the journey to the obvious destination is as elaborately appointed as you could wish, which is something. For as wonderfully weird as so much of the show is, in the end it falters because, compared to the topic it's tackling, it just isn't mysterious and terrifying enough."
American Theater Web - Somewhat Recommended
"It's a scary, fractured ride, and also one that, despite two first-rate performances, becomes somewhat wearisome...'The Father' initially intrigues, but as it moves forward, Zeller's strategy to disorient while also evincing André's mental decline becomes increasingly gimmicky...There's an indubitable pull to the material and the performances, but one can't help but wish that it had been offered up in a less distancing manner."
TheaterMania - Somewhat Recommended
"While he has a tendency to veer into Master Thespian territory, Langella is quite extraordinary when he drops these histrionics. These poignant instances are devastating...It's difficult to stand up against a performance as large as Langella's, and the rest of the cast is only adequate...Director Hughes should shoulder most of the blame for the deficiencies in the performances, but they are also partly caused by the script."
TheaterScene.net - Highly Recommended
"Langella turns in a virtuoso performance. You may be confused, you may be shocked, you may disturbed, but you won't be bored for a moment...In the hands of a consummate artist like Langella, the play is terrifying...Although the rest of the cast of six have nothing as momentous as Langella's role, they acquit themselves well...Director Doug Hughes has piloted the play with a sure hand, keeping everything as minimalist as the text which resembles Pinter crossed with Ionesco."
Theatre Is Easy - Recommended
"Though far from uplifting, 'The Father' is a refreshing addition to the current Broadway scene—a one-set, low-fi, actor-driven exploration of an uncomfortable human truth...As Baby Boomers grow older and their children come of age, both groups will increasingly look to art for some means of coping. Using innovative storytelling to touch on familiar themes, Zeller has has endeavored to give them just that."
Huffington Post - Recommended
"After all is said and done, you have Zeller's provocative new play—already an international crowd-pleaser—and a monumental turn from the star. Hughes provides effective staging, but by this point in time one wonders whether directors have learned to simply step aside and watch Frank go."
Theatre Reviews Limited - Highly Recommended
"Under Doug Hughes' exacting and brilliant direction, the ensemble cast successfully creates a pantheon of characters that, depending on one's point of view, are real or unreal...Frank Langella's performance as André is mesmerizing. He slowly peels away the layers of an insidious disease with a remarkable tenderness and vulnerability...Mr. Zeller constructs a fascinating puzzle for the audience to decipher."
Broadway Blog - Recommended
"Zeller's play has an unnerving way of putting the audience in the mind of its central character...Director Dough Hughes resists sentimentality by keeping the staging lean and purposeful...But the second main reason to see 'The Father' is to experience Langella in the title role. The three-time Tony Award winner delivers a master's class in character development. Reminding us that we are a myriad of experiences and emotions, he effortlessly vacillates between moments."
DC Theatre Scene - Somewhat Recommended
"'The Father' cleverly employs the kind of effect perfected by absurdist playwrights, but this time for a specific, accessible purpose...Still, for all the freshness of the conceit and the cleverness of the construction, our interest flags whenever André is not on the stage...As in his Lear, Langella dominates...There is no character on Broadway now with whom we are made to feel more literal empathy."
Front Row Center - Recommended
"I cannot suggest you will enjoy 'The Father,' but I promise you, you will be moved—perhaps wounded…Watching a powerful patriarch brought low is a familiar piece of theater, but when Frank Langella takes the stage, we are in another dimension…One effect needs rethinking. Scene changes are fiercely disorienting—and yes, we get it—but it's too much...It has long been fashionable to say that Shakespeare wrote all we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.' Until now."
WNBC - Somewhat Recommended
"Langella's mercurial performance surely will be relatable to any audience member who has spent time around a person with dementia...Much of 'The Father' is a delusion, and so we work to form our own conclusions about what's real or not, even as André's shifting reality guides us toward a foreshadowed ending. This is an intricately constructed drama depicting a phenomenon few can identify with—what it must be like to be a capable person slowly losing his mind."
Theatres Leiter Side - Recommended
"Langella, 78, has always been a dominating actor, a throwback to those grand old-time stars of physical stature, vocal richness, heightened elocution, and elegant gestures. These attributes can sometimes make him seem theatrical, even hammy, if you will, but they work perfectly for André, even if he never was the dancer he claims to have been. Langella's innate grandiosity only makes the pathos of André's descent into infantile dependency that much more tragically moving."
Bobs Theater Blog - Recommended
"His performance was better than the material. Zeller cleverly presents things from the confused point of view of the person with dementia...There's more than a touch of Pinter lurking here...Doug Hughes's direction is assured. Multiple short scenes are punctuated by flashing lights around the proscenium and loud strings, which becomes tiresome rather quickly. Go for the bravura performance by Langella and you won't be disappointed."
Times Square Chronicles - Highly Recommended
"This show is Mr. Langella's. He makes us feel the gamut of emotions and when he is cruel, we feel the slice...This show is a must for anyone who is dealing with somebody with dementia or Alzheimer's. It is a heartbreaking picture inside their mind. Mr. Langella is definitely my pick and winner for Best Actor in a play. This play will also be on the list of Tony nominations for Best Play. Well deserved and well worth watching."
DC Metro Theater Arts - Recommended
"The device the author and director Doug Hughes have chosen to present this difficult material to us is elevated by the superb work of Frank Langella. The material itself is somewhat inconsistent in that the supporting characters are not nearly as interesting...As this play is conceived from the father's point of view, it is in the end saved by the richness of Mr. Langella's work...The final moments are as moving and heartbreaking as the old gent."
Act Three - The Reviews - Highly Recommended
"There is brilliance in Mr. Langella's performance, but perhaps more importantly there is brilliance in Doug Hughes' direction of Mr. Zeller's work. The vignette blackouts, the shocking strobe light, the stark lights up on the next, often conflicting scene - all effects that heighten the impact of the material...Mr. Langella does most of the heavy lifting here, and his performance is transcendent. This is one play you won't soon forget."
Entertainmant Hour Blog - Somewhat Recommended
"Langella interprets and expresses André's character with the precision of an actor of his stature. Always taking up the whole stage, Langella brings into his performance a depth that infects other cast members…Dark and at times humorous, the play was a long 90 minutes. While a great mental exercise to follow, Langella's journey out of his flat and into a hospital was not perfectly riveting. However, seeing Langella light up the stage was well worth the journey."