IN MY FATHER'S WORDS [2014 / 2015]                        

Glasgow / Dundee / Highlands & Islands / New York                                      writer Justin Young

dir Philip Howard / Dundee Rep, Culture 2014, XX Commonwealth Games                                               

Justin Young's play is set by the shore of Lake Ontario in Canada and concerns Louis, a university lecturer, and his elderly father Don who is succumbing to a dementia which uncovers his lost past through a long-forgotten, fragmented Gaelic.  

We encounter Don at the opening of the play, running around the perimeter of his self-made home whilst the music provides a slower counterpoint with its elegiac focus on his fading memory.  

Moving the Boxes is an energised clearing of the house by Flora, Don's carer, its motor rhythms hinting of the Bach that Justin has Louis listen to obsessively in a recording by Glenn Gould.  It is another movement sequence that has its own space and doesn't underscore dialogue.  This production toured to New York in 2015 as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival.