REVIEW: DELINQUENT DAD by E.J. Anderson at Theatre at the Tabard 11 - 28 October 2023

‘Great premise, great performances, not quite there with the script’ ★★★

In Annie Hall, the Woody Allen character quips about a restaurant where the food is terrible and the portions too small. As if you’d want more of something awful. Delinquent Dad has the opposite problem, a premise that’s brilliant but way too much plot for the overall dish to be satisfying.

A young couple live in a flat, and his mum and dad are coming to dinner. Only mum isn’t, because she’s coming to dump dad, out of her life and on to their sofa for the foreseeable future after discovering the latest of his affairs. It’s a great idea, a disruptive parent freed to wreck his offspring’s life, and for about half of the play it pays off nicely as Matt (Bradley Crees) and Cara (Elizabeth Back) get used to having the older codger (John Gorick) about the place, drinking them out of wine and revealing such hidden foibles as a string of affairs and a rash investment that’s lost the family finances. But the show already shows signs of going off the rails before the interval with the arrival of a fourth character, a shady financial adviser who’s mis-invested both Cara’s and Dad’s cash, and it veers into overkill after the break with underdeveloped subplots about the breakdown of society beyond their four walls and a crypto currency fraud submerging the promise of the initial premise.

Which is a shame since the four actors (Mark Parsons is the dodgy financial advisor who creates the crypto trouble) have real chemistry and work tremendously hard to make comic bricks from less and less straw. Back and Parsons, in particular, bring real comic energy, while Crees works manfully to be increasingly appalled as revelation after revelation about his old dad’s racketty lifestyle is unveiled.

There are loads of great comic touches – Dad has cut off the ends of his own ties to save Mum the trouble; there are laugh-out-loud one-liners. But the play doesn’t trust its audience to revel in the simple situation of a couple already struggling to make a life together having that life disrupted by a delinquent Dad, instead piling on more and more implausible external plotlines. Nor is Dad quite delinquent enough – his affairs and loss of the family fortune are promising, but the attempt at a state-of-the-nation breakdown of society and the rest of the extraneous plot rather push him into the background as the play goes on.

Much to enjoy, great premise, great performances, but not quite there with the script.

Photography: Matt Collins

DELINQUENT DAD by E.J. Anderson

Director: Nick Bromley

Theatre at the Tabard, Chiswick    11 to 28 October 2023

Box Office: https://tabard.org.uk/whats-on/delinquent-dad/

Reviewer: David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Jack Studio’s Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, Kenneth Branagh award finalist, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.