That Face
Opening Night: May 18, 2010
Closing: June 27, 2010
Theater: New York City Center
From Britain’s fastest-rising young playwright comes this shattering and darkly funny new drama about a family at the breaking point. Mia and Henry have long been dealing with their mother’s addictions, but after a prank goes wrong at Mia’s boarding school, their situation goes from comically bad to utterly ridiculous. When their estranged father arrives to sort things out, they must face the reality that their well-to-do family may have combusted beyond repair. Following critically acclaimed sold-out runs at The Royal Court Theatre and in London’s West End, this award-winning first work by Polly Stenham makes its much-anticipated New York debut next spring.
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May 19, 2010
You’ve probably heard it said that some people just shouldn’t have children. But consider this: if the people who shouldn’t have children didn’t have children, where would Western literature be? Half the memoirs on best-seller lists, it seems, are about surviving monster parents, as are too many first novels to count.
READ THE REVIEWMay 19, 2010
I’m always excited to see a Manhanttan Theatre Club production. Something about the ambiance they create speaks of old time theatre. Maybe it’s just the fact that they call it a club that makes me feel fancy, but I like it.
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May 19, 2010
Polly Stenham’s "That Face" deals with unset tling emotional violence and pathologies. And it doesn’t introduce them gradually, either: The play jumps straight into the deep end of the pool. Enter at your own risk.
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May 19, 2010
Victor Slezak and Laila Robins in That Face (© Joan Marcus) In order to fully understand the appeal of That Face, which is now being seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I after an award-winning run in London, it helps to know that the playwright, Polly Stenham, was only 19 years old when she wrote this sensational (in all senses of the word) work about the ultimate dysfunctional family. Don’t let anyone tell you this is a black comedy, though; That Face is an artful attempt to give meaning to misery.
READ THE REVIEWMay 19, 2010
Picture this scenario: Martha, a very attractive London matron who’s never been very tightly wrapped, has gone over the edge since her affluent husband Hugh left her and her two kids to start a new family in Hong Kong. Since money is no problem, she lolls around a big bed most of the day, drinking and gobbling valiums like so many Godiva chocolates. The bed she lolls in is that of her 18-year-old son Henry who she’s encouraged to drop out of prep school and study art under her tutelage. For Martha this insures that his face which she adores, is never out of her sight. For Henry it’s his way of taking on the absent father’s responsibility for taking care of Mommie Dearest. There’s also a young daughter, Mia, who attends a posh boarding school which does little to discourage nasty hazing and so, to add inadvertent criminality to dysfunction, the teeny bopper overdoses a fellow student as part of a nasty hazing with pills stolen from Mom’s stash.
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