That Face

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Polly Stenham is so famous for writing her debut play aged 19, that it sometimes feels like it’s become subliminally accepted that her youth was the reason ‘That Face’ was so successful. Was its West End-storming success purely industry excitement at her youth? The 90 minute drama builds to an explosive conclusion in which a cross-dressed Henry lets go in every sense of the word, Matt Smith delivering an epic monologue of madness, although he is not the one destined for sectioning.

That Face is a two- act play written by Polly Stenham. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 26 April 2007, directed by Jeremy Herrin. The play was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 2008, opening on 1 May. [1] It made its American premiere in May 2010, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, running through until 27 June. [2] Plot [ edit ]You were extremely successful at a very young age. You’re also a young woman. How do you feel about being seen as a representative of new female talent? Writer Polly Stenham was just 19 when she wrote this, her first play. Having had it's premiere at the Royal Court and garnered a number of awards, it's now moved up to the West End. It's success is well-deserved because there's a freshness in the writing and the humour as well as the plot.

Scene 8 - Mia wants to protect Henry from Martha and stands by him when she is about to be institutionalised. Mia begins to turn against HughThere is a danger in reviewing a play for a second time of repeating oneself but in this case, there is no other analogy for the early scenes than a modernised female version of Tom Brown's Schooldays. In a gruesomely realistic initiation ceremony, Mia is led on by her own personal Flashwoman, Catherine Steadman's Izzy, to torture a new girl. What starts off as fun (at least in the fetid minds of the older girls) ends up in hospital, with the youngster battered, bruised and probably traumatised for life. Mia and Henry's parents are estranged. Their father is a wealthy broker who lives in Hong Kong and their mother is a disturbed, self-centred alcoholic who fears and hates her daughter but loves her son so much that she reaches for the bottle whenever he's not around. Henry has given up school supposedly to focus on his artistic skills, but the real reason is to keep his mother on the straight and narrow.

No booking fees.Prices increase based on demand. Book early to secure your seats at the best prices. Mike Britton alternates between a bedroom that becomes increasingly Tracey Emin-influenced as the night goes on and other simpler creations until the whole space is as horrible a mess as the family that occupy it. Polly Stenham has said that the starting point for That Face was "to write about a class of people I hadn't often seen represented in the theatre", which suggests that trust-funded, privately educated dropouts are an endangered minority on the English stage. Yet her 2007 debut does indicate that no one has focused more acutely on the hysterical, destructive neuroses of the upper-middle class since Noël Coward. I ask her about being a woman in theatre in an era of #MeToo, and if she stands by her words in a 2016 interview – that this is the best time to be one. Yes, she insists, it is, but just as she said then, it does not mean the battle is done. “Pretty much everyone I know has been sexually assaulted, whether that’s a hand up a skirt at a club or rape.” But as far as theatre is concerned, she has been occasionally patronised – nothing more. “But then I’m a director; I’m not in the same vulnerable position as actors.” The reason That Face is written in a “Realistic” fashion is that the play focuses on things that happen in the real world. In the real world, families deal with divorces all the time and the aftermath that comes with the divorce. Children are usually the ones that tend to suffer the most, and this play showcases the hardships that the children are dealing with, due to their family being broken. Realism is when the playwright is wanting to focus on human behavior and give the audience in a sense a reflection of what they may experience in their respective lives. For example, at the beginning of the play, we see a rebellious teenager, Mia, getting into trouble at her school for drugging a classmate of hers. Now, not everyone will be able to relate exactly to this situation. However, they might be able to relate to the rebellious stage of teenagers, and for them to get into trouble at school. Throughout the play, there are many examples of human behavior that many people relate too. One reviewer named Lucy Avery pointed out how people can see themselves in the play. “However,Stenham also says that she felt the audience at the Royal Court had not seen themselves on the stage in this way -a reminder to us all thatif you get the right audience in front of a story that directly speaks to them, you’ve got the chance at a very successful play.” (Avery 2015).When looking at the elements of Pinteresque, there is usually a long awkward drawn-out silence that usually causes a sense of fear and anxiety. The use of language as a means of communication has lost its purpose and words are often void of meaning. For example, there is a point where Martha has started talking to herself, in a sense that she has become schizophrenic, and even treats Henry as if he was a stranger to her: