FATHER DREAMS

Mary Gallagher

Described by the author as "the waking and sleeping dreams of Paul Hogan, the son, on a Sunday afternoon," the play is comprised of flashbacks and fantasies which illuminate the steady disintegration of a family dogged by the father's growing madness.

A failed lawyer, desperately trying to maintain appearances with Irish braggadocio, the father withdraws steadily from reality, leaving his wife and children impoverished and embittered. The action takes place largely in the mind of the son, Paul, as he drifts in and out of sleep, while debating whether to visit his father in the institution where he has been confined. Memories are interspersed with interludes of vaudeville humour, where past and present are distorted into scenes of wild, cartoon-like fantasy. But guilt - and terror - cannot be laughed away and, as the line between sanity and madness grows thinner, we are made movingly aware. that the son, while fighting to avoid the fate of his father, may, inevitably, come to share it.