That Face

Polly Stenham's debut is a stunning dissection of how the excesses of money and drugs can destroy what, on paper, should be a happy and comfortable family unit. Presented in the round, the central tension lies between mother Martha's destructive alcoholism and her son Henry's sense of responsibility to rehabilitate her in an increasingly unstable home.

Polly Stenham's debut is a stunning dissection of how the excesses of money and drugs can destroy what, on paper, should be a happy and comfortable family unit. Presented in the round, the central tension lies between mother Martha's destructive alcoholism and her son Henry's sense of responsibility to rehabilitate her in an increasingly unstable home.

The fallout encompasses Martha's daughter, Mia, facing expulsion from her expensive boarding school for a badly thought-out initiation ceremony involving a few too many Valium, and the estranged father, Hugh (Julian Wadham), who returns from Hong Kong as pater ex macchina to tidy up his family's mess and leave his reputation unsullied.

An uncluttered stage has a double bed as it's centrepiece where the action switches effortlessly between Mia's boarding school dorm and the quasi-Oedipal bed shared by Matt Smith as Henry and Lindsay Duncan as Martha. The mother-son relationship is both darkly comic and absurd, and Henry's frustration in the face of Martha's manipulative games builds to a ferocious melting point at the play's climax.

The dialogue ricochets between public school banter, sloshed mummy and rich daddy convincingly and is compellingly executed by the cast under Jeremy Herrin's clean and thorough direction. The schoolgirls Mia (Felicity Jones) Izzy (Catherine Steadman) and their victim Alice (Abigail Hood) are suitably naïve and debauched in equal measure. Lindsay Duncan gives a masterclass in the tragic side of ab-fab boozing. Julian Wadham's smooth broker does a fine job of struggling to keep his cool against a barrage of childish abuse and home truths.

Hopefully a West-End transfer beckons. Check it out now in case the current commercial climate keeps a searing and important play from making it onto a bigger stage.

Tim Daish

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