What does it mean to become your father’s father? As we move towards death, do we reach a truth or confirm our illusions? Can you ever know your father? How do we let go of those we love? How do we hold on to beauty?The play deals with a son who tries by turns to please, understand and settle accounts with his widowed and dementing dad. Soon after my mother died, I took my father for a long drive around Europe, just as he was drifting into dementia. The play is loosely based on that trip – a crazy, fraught and beautiful experience. The piece began life as a monologue, morphed into a memoir for a while, and then settled down in its current form: an intimate two-hander. I hope the play is true to my father’s voice and makes broader sense as a meditation on parenting, love and identity.

The phrase ‘water falling down’ was how dad described rain after his aphasia began to corrupt his speech. The play tries capture the love of words and the anguish of losing them. It also has a strong physical dimension embodied in the son’s attempts to care for his father  and the father’s resistance, both to this care and the decline of his body. The play enacts our unease with decay, death and grief and the preciousness of small moments of connection.

Mark Swivel, Playwright

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