Writer: Chris Falcon
Director: Anita Gander
It is never easy to stand in front of an audience and reveal deeply personal information and in Chris Falcon’s new show Daddy Issues, their character refrains from reading the full details of a letter to her father asking why he stopped loving her. That difficulty is vastly enhanced when the story being told involves sexual abuse and suicide ideation, making Falcon’s semi-autobiographical entry into the Camden Fringe one of the festival’s most poignant experiences. Performed at the Rosemary Branch for a selection of dates in August, the question for Falcon and director Anita Gander is whether drama is the right medium for the current iteration of Daddy Issues.
Opening with Annie contemplating suicide, this 50-minute play explores the relationship between father and daughter as it alters across her lifetime. Now largely estranged from him, Annie reflects on the eager child she once was and the unconditional love provided by a caring parent. But as Annie grows, her father becomes increasingly distant until one day that turns to violence and other memories begin to surface.
Falcon’s play takes an essay-like approach to laying out the different phases of Annie’s relationship with her father and the various questions that arise about his treatment of her, and much of the play feels exploratory and internal as the writer-performer works through the things that happened and tries to make sense of them in front of an audience. But in doing so, the opening parts of Daddy Issues are bogged down in the details of Annie’s life, acting out scenes of happy playtimes and Annie’s money issues in the present – an incident referred to once and then forgotten. And while this may be useful context, these overwritten sections consume too much time.
The show also flips between different kinds of dramatic presentation that feel confused, unsure whether it should solely present Annie’s perspective, give room to her father’s motivations or try to include both sides. The choice to play the father’s words as a pre-recorded vocal and then later present him as a silent but masked figure stalking the stage are contrasting ideas that undercut the narrative thread – either he is a real character with a physical presence or a fantasy creation who morphs from the perfect dad to a nightmarish attacker who psychologically affects Annie into the present day.
None of this detracts from the importance of what Falcon has to say but restructuring the piece to think about the dramatic shape, the emotional beats, moments of directional change and the defiant endpoint would help reshape the presentation of the story. One way to do that might be to make it Annie’s monologue entirely and have the actor deliver other character roles within the performance, allowing for a broader engagement with the wider family group, friends and professionals to flesh out the life being enacted. And then, Daddy Issues could choose its perspective point, deciding who Annie is talking to and when; is this a therapy session with a trained professional or is she talking directly to the theatre audience, using the intimacy of that connection as a springboard to awareness and open conversation?
This is an important topic and Falcon’s show has a lot of the substance it needs to say something really important about it, but Daddy Issues needs to reflect on the role drama plays in bringing this testimony to an audience.
Runs until 25 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
