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At 21, a Playwright Takes the West End by Storm

by Zoe Strimpel
Mon, 12 May 2008

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Only 21, Polly Stenham has caused a seismic rumble in London with "That Face," the play she wrote while still a teenager. Well in advance of its West End opening over the weekend at the Royal Court Theatre, word spread of the elfin dramatist's astonishing talent. When the play was showcased last year at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, where Ms. Stenham was on a Young Writers Program, the Guardian called this study of upper-class family dysfunction, with an incestuous mother-son relationship at its core, "gob-smacking." Today the Evening Standard's Nicholas de Jongh notes that "this is the first play on the subject by an English author since Noel Coward's more oblique treatment in The Vortex" (which was also on in London earlier this year).

There is something peculiarly British about the mess the family finds itself in. Daddy jumps ship for a woman in Hong Kong, and while he rarely bothers to visit, he keeps the money flowing. The mother, Martha (Lindsay Duncan), drinks her days away, doting on her equally devoted son (played to perfection by Matt Smith), while daughter Mia (Hannah Murray) drugs a teacher for the sake of a boarding school initiation ceremony, using her mother's Valium. It all sounds pretty messy and depressing — but then, these are the sorts of messes that we love to watch.

Ms. Stenham will have found some inspiration in parallels with her own upbringing: She was raised by her father, a big-shot exec at Unilever who died in 2006. Nor is she is a stranger to the elite world of the British boarding school, having been packed off to Wycombe Abbey and Rugby at a fairly young age. In interviews, though, she is careful to say that the explosive familial mess portrayed in "That Face" is in no way a reflection of her life to date. It's raw talent and imagination, then, to blame.

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