Father Familiar, directed by Stephanie McKellar-Smith, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman

JOHN Bach and Mel Dodge, breathing life into the words of Branwen Millar’s script, remind us of the heartbreak that comes for children as their parents age and ail. Also of the grief suffered by people who never realise their potential, for whatever reason or combination of obstacles, yet long for what might have been.
In Millar’s play, we first meet Sam (Dodge) visiting her father in a rest home on Christmas Day. Roy is clever and a little caustic and soon we find he’s also forgetful and vulnerable. Sam corrects him and repeats information he’s heard many times before and that she’s explained many times before. It’s a process that, inevitably, frustrates them both.
She’s a good daughter, visiting when she can. We can’t know if he was a good father, at least at the start. When he has his moments of staring into the air, frightened and lost and searching for memories, you have to stop yourself going on to the stage and giving him a reassuring hug. Bach’s performance is heart-wrenching. He’s one of New Zealand’s longest serving actors and one of the best. As Sam’s rather brittle façade cracks and her humour turns vicious, Dodge reveals what has corroded her spirit. She is a pianist who couldn’t become a professional because of something that was out of her hands. She yearns to travel and start a new life but instead it’s her mother who’s done so. Regret upon bitterness has shaped this woman, who is as isolated in her life as her father is in his Whanganui rest home.
McKellar-Smith keeps the direction to the point, and the focus on the two actors’ faces. Millar’s script needs some honing and perhaps also some fact checking over rest home payments. But the emotions that pour out of Dodge and Bach, who are both exceptional, and for whom Millar wrote Father Familiar, can’t help but move you.