This afternoon I went up to town to the Duke of York's Theatre to see Polly Stenham's That Face. She is the youngest playwright to have a play in the West End for 50 years and was 19 when she wrote it. It had rave reviews at The Royal Court last year and has just opened for a short run in the West End. Mia is an apparently over-privileged 15 year old who manages to comatose a younger girl with drugs in a boarding school initiation ceremony that looks more like an act of torture. The school phones her mother but is alarmed to hear that her mother isn't too interested, in fact her mother, Martha, is an alcoholic on drugs herself. Henry is almost 18, he dropped out of school sometime ago to care for his mother, Martha, when their father left them and started a new family in Singapore. Henry cares for Martha a little too much, in fact the scene opens with Henry asleep in Martha's bed. A totally dysfunctional middle-class family in meltdown. Sounds grim? Perhaps but blackly comic and stunningly acted by Matt Smith (Henry) who loses his mind as much as his mother and by Lindsay Duncan as Martha. Duncan is a marvel as the over-possessive Martha who refers to her daughter as "the little shit" and whose method of keeping Henry tied to her non-existent apron strings is cutting up his clothes. There's a wonderful moment when she has a long conversation flirting with the talking-clock man on the phone! Give the woman another Olivier!
A slightly shell-shocked audience stumbled out into the bright London sunshine after 90 minutes of great theatre. Tags: play review
|
backthen
