That Face

Synopsis

Mia is at boarding school. She has access to drugs. They are Martha's. Henry is preparing for art college. He has access to alcohol. From Martha. Martha controls their lives. Martha is their mother. That Face is a powerful and darkly comic exploration of children who become parents to their parents.

Our Review:

12 May 2008

It’s an odd thing, transfers that don’t quite live up to what all the fuss was about. Although Polly Stenham’s first play That Face – a product of the Royal Court’s Young Writers Programme, first seen in the Theatre Upstairs in April last year – is clearly the work of a fine new talent, it hasn’t really hit the West End with a hurricane force.

Jeremy Herrin’s production has lost some of its engaging messiness in the Upstairs, where we literally sat around the bed as Lindsay Duncan’s raddled Martha in a pink negligee boozily clung onto her own teenage son Henry, and her daughter Mia tried to keep things together.

The various locations were picked out in a lighting plot by Natasha Chivers that took us to various locations, whereas now both Chivers’ work and the design of Mike Britton is streamlined into a grey sleek uniformity. The acting, too, seems remote from the audience.

The play is too fast and sharp for its own good, with little...

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Latest User Review

Sycamore Flint - 3 July 2008:

It's not bad but has been overpraised. I agree with others who thought the playing of the daughter was pretty bad - it was. Her voice, in particular, was terrible. And I lost interest in these people before the end, especially when it got shrieky and melodramatic. But some scenes are entertaining enough....

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