THAT FACE. To 19 May.

London

THAT FACE
by Polly Stenham

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 19 May 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
BSL Signed 16 May
Post-show talk 2 May
Runs 1hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 April

If life in the school dormitory’s tough, see what it’s like back home.
A second consecutive Theatre Upstairs play involving 3 teenage girls. But, unlike Lucy Cauldwell’s Leaves these girls aren’t siblings. And two of them have little independent part in Polly Stenham’s debut drama. The exception is Mia, almost expelled (but daddy’s rich and money talks) for a boarding-school ritual gone wrong. Largely as Mia stuffed the victim with Valium before she was trussed up by appalling dorm-head Izzy.

Mia stole the tablets from mother Martha, a picture of destructive, alcohol-hazed self-absorption. Husband Hugh went half-a-world away to escape (or evade responsibility for) Martha, while son Henry’s given up school and attempts to mix art-training with caring for her. It’s a hopeless mission, but he keeps up his missionary position, trying to protect her as he lashes out at his father. Bitten by his mother, ending in her underclothes and bedecked by her jewellery, Henry still seeks to prevent his father shutting her away.

In all this, the events at school become occluded, though Izzy turns up, walking a tightrope spun from the facile confidence that persuades others she’s a leader. Till Henry shuts her up. By when it’s evident Izzy is a Martha in the making, youthful confidence ready to ripen into rancid self-disgust. Bruised and tearful in a hospital bed, young Alice reminds there is always a victim.

Stenham begins with a fair amount of action; later the drama becomes a voyage into the central relationships. Her resolution, with Mia’s quietly stated hope, is unconvincing as Look Back in Anger’s squirrels and bears moment.

There’s fine confidence to the 3 young women actors (Felicity Jones’ Mia conveying adolescent naivety and sullenness, alongside lively intelligence) while Matt Smith delves beneath haute-bourgeois accents to find the young man’s tether nearing its end as he tries to reconcile Oedipal feelings with inability to act.

Julian Wadham’s Hugh is all brisk commands and little sense for people, while Lindsay Duncan plays with a remarkable mix of lightness and restraint that intensifies the sense of a life knotted beyond control. It’s a performance lining her up for modern drama’s other Martha, in Albee’s Virginia Woolf?.

Martha: Lindsay Duncan
Alice: Abigail Hood
Mia: Felicity Jones
Henry: Matt Smith
Izzy: Catherine Steadman
Hugh: Julian Wadham

Director: Jeremy Herrin
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound: Emma Laxton
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: Anna Dirckinck-Holmfeld

2007-04-27 11:04:16