An absorbing, thought provoking and imaginative play, leaving the audience to reflect on the underlying themes (sometimes not always immediately apparent from the writing, intended I am sure) and impressed with the sensitive and professional acting.

Somebody has died. There are flowers. The bereaved daughters are rallying round offering support to the surviving partner, their father. But then their mother appears from the vegetable garden and it is she who needs the counselling and it is the father who they mourn. Or maybe neither parent has really died and what we are watching is the struggle of people to cope when the once intellectually powerful faculties begin to succumb to the ravages of dementia? What is the reality and what are the imaginings? Is the question to be resolved and does it matter if it is? The tension is maintained to the end in this astonishing, thoughtful drama. We explore age, marriage, loyalty, gender, generational differences, the battle of the sexes, the Pinteresque presence of unexpected visitors and much more in this extraordinary play by Florian Zeller. The translation by Christopher Hampton is idiomatically excellent and Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins are pitch perfect.

We saw this in it's pre-West End run in the lovely Richmond Theatre. As you'd expect, the big names give excellent performances, with a good supporting cast. But this is one of the most irritating and unfulfilling plays I've seen in a long time. Someone has died. It looks like it's the gnarled writer's wife. But she appears, interacting not only with the writer and his daughters, but also with an outsider, Paul. Are we getting the perspective of dementia? Maybe. But why then get it when the writer is off-stage? And then there's the lover from the 1940s, Some serious plays have an emotional or intellectual depth which makes it worth putting in a lot of mental effort to understand them. I don't think this is one of them.

So disappointed in the story. So confusing and quite depressing. Can't recommend but the acting is, of course, great.