That Face. : Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond.

This is a revival of a play which propelled Matt Smith to fame. It is by Polly Stenham and she wrote it when she was 19 and it was shown first at the Royal Court.  It is a story of the collapse of a highly dysfunctional family and has some quite shocking content. It runs straight through for 100mins.  The mother Martha is an alcoholic who lives in London with her 18 year old son Henry, who is trying to act as her carer. There is a suggestion of incest, and certainly the relationship is highly inappropriate. The daughter Mia is expelled from a private school and is not wanted back home, and Martha’s response to the school is bad enough for them to raise safety issues and call the father. He now lives in Hong Kong with a new wife and child. While Mia at school is a total brat, she does at least figure out that Henry needs to be rescued, and the father eventually suggests that Martha needs to go to private rehab, or he will have her sectioned. There is a lot of emotion played out while all this is going on and poor Henry, who is desperate to save Martha, ends up wearing her nightdress (which disgusts his father) and finally wetting himself. So there was a lot going on and it was all very fraught for a Saturday afternoon in Richmond.  It was however an excellent show.

Martha was played by Niamh Cusack and she was excellent as the appalling Martha. Henry was played by a young guy called Kasper Hilton-Hille in his professional debut, and he was incredible for a newbie. He is the son of Anastasia Hille. The actress playing Mia was also a debutante and carried her role very well. So despite it being a bit of a fraught experience and obviously not to everyone’s taste, I thought it was extremely good and the actors were terrific. It was very well received by the audience as a whole but some of our group were not that keen on the content.