That Face

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That Face has much Freudian imagery that is used to express desire as well as the fears and anxieties the characters all face. One of these images is the use of the word “soldier” that Martha calls Henry. This image of a soldier keeps being repeated throughout the play. I think that Martha is using this phrase towards Henry because he has been there for her when her husband left them and wasn’t there for her when she needed someone. She has in a sense idolized Henry in being her protector and hero. This admiration also leads to her dark desire of having sexual tension for her son. For example, 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). Henry. So I can go and know you’re safe. So I can look Dad in the eye when he comes. So I can know that I helped you somehow. Please. This one thing. ( Urgently.) I don’t want you to get sectioned. I won’t be able to visit you. It’ll be like before, remember? I don’t know where they’ll take you. I don’t know if they’ll let you out. Lindsay Duncan and Matt Smith once again present unforgettable performances, while Catherine Steadman reprises her witty and incredibly assured cameo from first time around. Hannah Murray, who has been drafted in to add glamour to the West End production is not yet a great stage presence, but since she's only 18, has a lot of time to develop. The play begins, though, with a scene at Mia's school where the initiation ceremony of a new schoolgirl turns sour because Mia has given the thirteen year-old victim a huge dose of her mother's valium, rendering her totally unconscious and, onc suspects, close to death.

Stenham has recently explored her own sense of place in a forthcoming digital project for the Young Vic called My England. Artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah asked Stenham, among other playwrights, to write a three-minute monologue on Englishness that will be shown on the theatre’s social media channels. So what does Englishness mean to her? A popular contemporary dramatist, Polly Stenham (1986-) has become a staple of the London theatrical scene in recent years. Born in London and educated at Wycombe Abbey, a private boarding school, Stenham was raised in an affluent and theatre-loving family. Her plays include That Face (2007) and Hotel (2014). Stenham's characters often live lives of dysfunction and chaos, showcasing common contemporary concerns. In 2013 her third play No Quarter was staged at the Royal Court, directed by Jeremy Herrin and starring Tom Sturridge. The company also included Taron Egerton in his first year after studying at RADA. [10] [11]

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Despite her relatively young age, Polly Stenham has published and staged a significant number of plays. Her first Play, That Face, was written when Stenham was only nineteen years old. It was gained critical acclaim and launched Stenham to popularity. The Play established Stenham as a modern playwright who investigates contemporary themes, like dysfunctional families, alcoholism, and drug addiction. The plays Tusk Tusk (2009) and Hotel (2014) soon followed, to name a few. I have a complicated relationship with that. I love clothes, and I’m genuinely interested. I remember I did a shoot for The Sunday Times a while ago for Hotel, and there was a moment when I was in a dress, and I was on the roof of the National and someone was throwing pretend bits of my script at me, so it looked like they were flying around me. And in my head I was like, ‘You’re such a twat.’ For five years from the time that he was 13, Henry supported, covered for and humoured this woman. He is so obsessed with keeping her that he gave up his own education and prospects to do so. He also very nearly gives Mum-Martha his body in a final effort to retain her sanity. Vanessa Kirby stars as Julie in Stenham’s new play for the National. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

It begins at a girls’ boarding school, where Mia (Ruby Stokes) and her performatively posh, vaguely sinister friend Izzy (Sarita Gabony) are inflicting a hazing ritual upon their new dorm mate. But a giggling Mia has fed the young girl a massive dose of Prozac that she’s swiped off her mum… as it dawns on Izzy how serious this is, they enter panic mode. This quote is a good example of how Martha is drinking away her troubles because she doesn’t want to deal with reality. At some swanky, girls' boarding school our female Flashman (Flash-girl?) Izzy is an appropriately cowardly sadist who eventually ends up gibbering after, with help of heroine Mia, she puts a 13 year-old Arthur substitute into intensive care following an initiation rite that goes wrong. I recently saw a revival of another zeitgeisty ‘00s smash, ‘God of Carnage’, and it had very clearly lost its edge with the passage of time. Billen, Andrew. “Truly a Middle-Class Act.” America’s Current Affairs & Politics Magazine, www.newstatesman.com/theatre/2008/05/mia-henry-school-amplifies.

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Cite web|url= https://deadline.com/2023/03/dope-girls-bbc-crime-drama-bad-wolf-marek-kohn-book-1235277713/ When it comes to dialogue in plays that are representative of Realism, it’s usually very boring and dull and doesn’t seem to create much interest in conflict. However, this type of dialogue is good for revealing what the character is about. For example, the way Martha speaks within the text lets us know how mentally unstable she is. She speaks with a childlike state of mind. She also has moments where she speaks complete nonsense, which helps us see how bad her addiction has caused her to dwindle into a dark hole. The dialogue in this play also does a good job of depicting conversations we may hear in an everyday situation, but also shows the struggles that families can face. We do see some Freudian imagery being used with the dialogue, which ties into the Psychological Realism, and Pinteresque. This paper will go further into depth about those images that are depicted within the text At times Mia, played by Felicity Jones, is so well grounded that she seems too good to be true. As Catherine Steadman's Izzy panics over her comatose victim, Mia is totally calm. Later, when family issues boil over, the 16/17 year-old is almost always the calm observer. In my memory, Stenham’s writing has an exhilarating fierceness, and her text rings with addiction, abuse and aggravation. On this occasion, I thought it is also a bit too explicit and too explanatory. On the plus side, she is equally sympathetic to both her older and younger characters, and her portrait of mother Martha is emotionally powerful, emphasising her chronic neediness and deep vulnerability. Like her image in a distorting mirror, Henry is out of his depth, trying to help but unable to satisfy his mother’s deepest longings, while the underwritten Hugh is fatally distant. Mia, unsurprisingly, is a bit lost, having been given little parental guidance. Yes, a damaged rich older generation hands down misery to its children.

Jeremy Herrin's direction is as refreshing as the writing. The play flows fluidly with the cast handling scene changes. But some of the characters keep position as if they're fading out of memory as the scene changes takes place. It's a neat and highly effective transition. However, the music is a little on the loud side for my taste, albeit I can see why it needs to jar given the way the characters grate against each other in this topsy-turvy family world. That Face starts out as a kind of transgender remake of Tom Brown's Schooldays updated to the 21st Century.

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Martha. That’s funny, I did have a son, called Harry, actually. Well, he died, about five hours ago. I’m a little upset. So if you would just— (Stenham 60; Act 1.6). Now, over a year on, the play hits the West End in a cool, stylish production with the same underlying design principle but an ethic that could hardly be more different. The story, though, is very much the same, reeking of autobiography with well-delineated characters clearly drawn directly from life. 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.”

Polly Stenham, a 20 year-old playwriting debutante, writes with such assurance that one fears that a fair amount of the subject-matter is autobiographical. If that is the case, she, like her surrogate Mia, has endured a lot in her young life. The Orange Tree Theatre does sterling work in commissioning new plays and reviving those that have lapsed into obscurity. No one could say that Polly Stenham’s work as a whole is neglected or unappreciated; but it is fifteen years since her breakthrough play – ‘That Face’ – was received with critical acclaim at the Royal Court, and therefore now quite appropriate to see how it stands up in a fresh production. Regrettably, despite some superb acting, I remain unconvinced. A mythology of family pain, spliced with partying and privilege, has arisen around Stenham since then – the double pull that appears as a recurring theme in almost all of her plays. In 2006, a day before That Face was accepted by the Royal Court, her father, Anthony, died suddenly – he had parented Polly and her sister, Daisy, alone after his divorce. Her mother, who was an alcoholic, died when Stenham was 26. But there is also the house in Highgate she has shared with 11 friends, the art gallery she owns in the heart of Camden Town and the expensive education (Wycombe Abbey, then Rugby) that she has talked about with a note of apology. That was really fun. I try to take things like that when they come – it’s nice to just keep learning. Polly Stenham’s blazing debut play exposes the secret lives of the rich with anarchic humour. That Face won the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award, the TMA Best New Play Award, and the Critics’ Circle Award. This is its first major London revival.Having given up school to look after her, Henry is protective but hardly more than a child in many ways himself and completely unable to handle a self-loathing woman who has already spent time in an asylum. Stenham's debut play That Face premiered at the Royal Court Theatre [1] in London in April 2007. It was directed by Jeremy Herrin and starred Lindsay Duncan as the alcoholic mother Martha and Matt Smith as her son Henry. Stenham won the Evening Standard 's 2007 Charles Wintour Award, [2] the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright [3] and the 2007 Theatrical Management Association Award for Best New Play. [4] So why adapt Miss Julie, a well-worn canonical work from 1888? Because the story of an aristocrat and her two servants is the perfect vehicle for causing contemporary explosions, she says. “You can get a big star and a big space with a classic, and you can truffle in much more radical material, too. It can be hidden in the Trojan horse of the classic and much more can be detonated inside it.” Before university she worked for the Ambassador Theatre Group and the Arcola Theatre, and during this time she enrolled in the Royal Court Young Writers Programme and wrote her first play. If Philip Larkin ever needed a play to embody his most famous line, "They f*** you up, your mum and dad", this is it. They may live continents apart but Lindsay Duncan's Martha, every bit as drunkenly vituperative as Edward Albee's earlier model, and self-centred Hugh (a slimy-smooth Julian Wadham) have jointly left 18-year-old Henry and 15-year-old Mia in a terrible state.