An excellent story. It does what Torchwood does best: monkey's paws. Ianto wants to know what happened to his father, and now he does.

Listen. If you want to do this play, do not read the spoilers. It deserves a listen instead.

The Story
Ianto's dad is dead, and Ianto is reminiscing with some old friends of his father. Except then he shows up in the past, and tries to not only have his cake, but eat it too. Why not change the past? It's a reckless move I've come to expect from Ianto, and unlike Rhys and Ianto's Excellent BBQ, Gareth David-Lloyd knows how not to let this devolve to Ianto snarking his opinions to a beleaguered second player in the play. Ianto comes at this from a place of vulnerability, and he meets a likable yet irresponsible father. He tries to curtail some of his father's reckless behaviour while getting some bonding time the play realises wonderfully.

Then the kicker: what Ianto does is working. His father, Disco, takes his advice and tries to turn his life around for the better. The second kicker: him doing so only makes Ianto and his family's life worse. It turns out his father, who normally never finishes things, sticks around his family only out of a sense of responsibility and loyalty, and it's been grinding him down for years, leading him to be the deadbeat dad Ianto has known and missed.

Of course, at that point, the trainwreck is coming. Ianto can let his father be happy and change the future and his own life for the worse, or he can doom his father to the sad end evocatively described by the play.

And this is Ianto. And Ianto, contrary to his demeanour, has never been nice

The Feels
This story is heartbreaking. The way the unexpressed emotions from Ianto pervade every single scene with him in this play is masterful, and I legit had to think about this a while to sort through the emotions I took away from it. But the story's biggest strength is showing that the world is not always as people expect it to be and bringing that back to the humans in the equation. It's most fantastic move is making Ianto's dad likeable, because that means that the listener has to really engage to bring the two pieces of Ianto's father, the deadbeat dad and the happy partier, together. It is an effective mystery which makes the payoff so much more impactful. This is not just Ianto's dad, but every single character in the play. They are all wonderfully human, and it dooms Ianto. It makes you happy Ianto got to interact with his father like this, but sad because you know it cannot end so simply.

It's second most fantastic move is to show only the buildup to Ianto's selfish but understandable betrayal of his father, and not the whole thing. It leaves you to fill in those blanks, and that makes its tragedy so much more powerful. It baits you with happy father-son scenes, and punches you in the gut in a way that takes a while to process, almost like whiplash. I think it's the best way for the play to end, after all, the actions are not the important bit, as we know their effect already.

Meanwhile, the play supports these two strong points with events paced exactly right, except for a little snag when Ianto suddenly jumps back in time (that could have been a better scene switch).

I think this play is exactly what it wants to be and it is that perfectly. Definitely one of my favourites.