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.” Although 'That Face' is sharply focused and intense, I wonder if the basic concept is really all that new. It's hard not to recollect the mother-daughter relationship in the hit TV comedy 'Absolutely Fabulous' where a wayward mother finds her studious and 'normal' daughter almost impossible to comprehend. I'm not saying that the ideas are identical by any means, but there are similarities. However, in spite of its humour, 'That Face' presents a much more serious and penetrating examination of parent-child relationships. 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. 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). No booking fees.Prices increase based on demand. Book early to secure your seats at the best prices.

You would really not want to meet any of the other characters, from slinky, jailbait Izzy through inadequate Henry to either member of the older generation. Polly Stenham's strength is in creating convincing characters, more immoral than amoral, and then putting authentic dialogue into their mouths. It has to be said, that her stage alter ego, Mia, gets a relatively easy ride compared to everybody else on show and even at her worst tends to be seen through rose-tinted glasses.

That Face, directed by Jeremy Herrin in the round, contains much wit. However, like Tom Brown's Schooldays, it can be unpleasant to watch at times, as its various characters self-destruct in conflagrations of mental and physical torture. It also affects the way women, particularly young women, are seen and asked to behave. You once said: ‘Harold Pinter doesn’t have to worry about this shit.’ How do you feel now? In 2011 Stenham, along with friend Victoria Williams, opened an art gallery, [8] the Cob Studios and Gallery (named after her art collector father) in Camden, London. [9] The Manhattan Theatre Club mounted the play on its Stage I in May 2010, with Cristin Milioti and Christopher Abbott portraying the siblings, and Laila Robins as the mother. [4] Landor Theatre [ edit ] 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.

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? 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. This is one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in more than 30 years of theatre reviewing. Its author, Polly Stenham, a graduate of the Royal Court's Young Writers Programme, is 20 now, just 19 when she wrote a play that sent me reeling into the night... In every respect this is a remarkable and unforgettable piece of theatre. [5] 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.’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. 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. The play received praise from some reviewers, with Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph commenting:

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.” 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 Hugh

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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.

It is not just about culture but mental health, too. “Theatre explains things that are hard to articulate,” Shenham says. “Why you would murder your own children, the tragedies, the dark, hidden desires as well as the good things. You forgive humanity, in a way. You see what we can do to each other and understand the imperfections of each other, despite fighting for the world to be a better place.” 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?Robert is Vivienne's husband and Frankie and Ralph's father. He has had an online affair and pictures of this have been leaked online, causing the downfall of Vivienne's political career. Robert is shown as incapable and struggling at times. Anna Burnside. “Letting rip at the middle classes; POLLY STENHAM ; Toxic behaviour by the bourgeoisie was overdue a savaging, says the young playwright – and she’s only just begun to explore it”. The Sunday Times (London), October 4, 2009. https://advance-lexis-com.proxy-bc.researchport.umd.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:7WSJ-YHC0-YBWN-K3XR-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed May 12, 2019. Just over a decade ago, Stenham became a preternaturally young darling of British theatre. The stratospheric success of her first play, That Face – from the Royal Court in 2007 to the West End of London, Broadway and the world – came at 19, with all of theatreland sounding breathless praise for this new teen prodigy. Stenham was born and raised in London. She attributes her love of theatre to her father as he took her to various shows from a young age, including many at the Royal Court Theatre which would later stage her first play. Looking at the style of Psychological Realism, it’s as if it’s a pinball of emotions just waiting to explode from your subconscious. The play had many parallels to that of things Polly Stenham experienced when she was growing up. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she attended boarding school. Her father was nothing like Hugh because her father was very caring, and she was very close to him. She wanted to mirror some of the things that actually occurred in her life, but she also wanted to focus on mental illness because it fascinated her. Stenham’s writing is really focusing on the human psyche of those who are suffering from addiction and those around the person with the addiction and how they are affected by it.