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In 40 years of watching Langella onstage, from Seascape and Dracula in the 1970s through Frost/Nixon and Man and Boy just recently, I’ve never seen that need come as close to full exposure as in the just-opened Manhattan Theatre Club production of The Father — not to be confused with Strindberg’s play of the same name, which Langella headlined at the Roundabout in 1996. In this Father, the American debut of the young French playwright Florian Zeller, Langella gets so close to strip-mining the core of his gifts that you think he may cave in, or that you will. It’s a must-see performance.

------Vulture

But Manhattan Theatre Club’s production, directed with astringent reserve by Doug Hughes, has another special effect in the imposing form of Langella himself. Tall, powerfully built and sonorous as ever, the 78-year-old actor has a commanding presence that contrasts strikingly with André’s growing helplessness; he brings shadows of King Lear (whom he played at BAM in 2014) to this stubborn bourgeois retiree. 

------TimeOut NY

The title character in Florian Zeller’s cold-eyed, harrowing “The Father,” which opened on Thursday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is often found in barricade position. He is an elegant old man, first seen dressed in stony shades of gray, seated obdurately in a gray chair, arms folded defensively. He is holding down the fort of his identity.Everything about his posture says, “Trespass at your own risk.” But because this man — his name is André — is played by Frank Langella, one of the most magnetic theater actors of his generation, there’s no way you’re going to honor his wish for privacy. Before you know it, you’ve walked straight into his head, and what a lonely, frightening, embattled place it is.

-----New York Times