Review: 'That Face' at the Orange Tree Theatre

'That Face' Review

Running until 7th October

Address: 1 Clarence St, Richmond TW9 2QE. Get directions.

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Our verdict

Watching That Face evokes a maelstrom of feelings, encompassing exhaustion, visceral overload and yet, strangely, a degree of exhilaration too. It’s certainly thought-provoking and memorable, an extraordinary achievement from Polly Stenham, a writer not yet twenty when the play was first produced in 2007.

Now stylishly revived at the Orange Tree in Josh Seymour’s riveting production, Niamh Cusack stars as Martha, a woman embroiled in a quasi-Oedipal relationship with her son Henry.

Martha is someone floundering on the edge, an alcoholic, pill-popping emotional mess who will only be comforted by her teenage son; it’s a role reversal that, of course, brings damaging consequences for Henry, seen to intense effect in the final scenes, superbly brought to life by Kasper Hilton-Hille in his professional stage debut.

His desperate struggle to be a caring surrogate parent to his mother, locked into an impossible situation, is sometimes incredibly painful to witness but never less than compelling drama.

As the play starts, the dangerous behaviour of Martha’s disaffected, estranged daughter Mia (another striking stage debut from Ruby Stokes)  at school has brought the family’s rather pompous father Hugh (Dominic Mafham) back home from his new life in Hong Kong, intent on re-establishing equilibrium.

Trying to contain Martha’s many excesses Henry has dropped out of school and is way out of his depth whilst Mia watches aghast from the sidelines, her brittle exterior clearly masking a bewildered and emotionally neglected girl. 

As it sounds, the play is really intense from first to last, almost too much so, saved by the sheer quality of the writing and uniformly good performances.

Flirty Izzy (Sarita Gabony), Mia’s manipulative school friend, brings some brief light relief, and Mia’s tenderness for her brother strikes a poignant note, but it’s a play that truly wrings out every last drop of emotion before it concludes. 

Cusack is wonderful throughout, throwing her whole body into the role as she persuasively captures the internal torment of a woman totally adrift, always thoroughly convincing whether she is savagely funny or uncomfortably controlling her son.

Conveying the limits of her world, Martha’s bed is central at all times with Eleanor Bull’s effective stage design - two large rings hovering over the action, white circles ringing the floor- signalling the claustrophobic environment that these characters inhabit.

All is enhanced by George Dennis’ evocatively discordant, staccato music, emphasising the dysfunctional family at the play’s core.

Despite the difficult subject matter, That Face remains an electrifying and engrossing play, full of intelligence and depth, surely heralding another triumph for the Orange Tree this autumn.