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by Polly Stenham, directed by Kelly Thornton

Nightwood Theatre/CanStage, Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto

October 29-November 21, 2009

That Face is a multiple award-winning British play from 2007 that garnered effusive praise from London critics.  The Scottish debut of the play in 2009 left critics thinking the play had been overpraised.  That impression is confirmed with the play’s Canadian premiere.  On the evidence of this Nightwood/Canadian Stage coproduction, 19-year-old playwright Polly Stenham seems to have taken the gooiest Tennessee Williams gumbo, added a character from Edward Albee and a dash of torture from Martin McDonagh and dished up an overcooked British stew.

The central problem is interesting enough--that of children who become parents to their parents.  Martha (Sonja Smits), the nod to Albee, is a mentally ill alcoholic pill-popper, whose condition worsened when she was abandoned by her high-flier husband Hugh (Nigel Bennett).  Martha’s children have opposite reactions.  Daughter Mia (Bethany Jillard) hates her and seems to reflect this in helping a friend (Athena Karkanis) torture a 13-year-old initiate (Teresa Labriola) to a girls’ boarding school.  Son Henry, however, has dropped out of school to help nurse Martha back to health only to be caught up in her sickening oedipal love for him.  There are no likeable characters and, contrary to what Stenham would like us to think, we’re quite glad to have the tough Hugh return to sort out his degraded family.

In both the English and Scottish productions Martha was praised as the “life-force” of the play.  Not so here, where Smits‘ mumbling impression of alcoholism turns Martha into a maudlin zombie.  Turner has it in him to be an excellent Henry, but director Kelly Thornton has him start at such a tempestuous pitch, she gives his character nowhere to go.  Rather than developing, Martha and Henry seem trapped in emotional stasis.  The normally enlightening Jillard leaves Mia’s changing motivations a mystery.  Thornton’s leaden pacing dampens any tension, and for a play that both Thornton and the original critics claim is brimming with black humour, not a whit surfaces, even in scenes clearly meant to be farcical.  The play and playwright clearly have potential but it will take a different director and a different Martha to realize it. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-11-03.

Photo: Sonja Smits and Kristopher Turner. ©Guntar Kravis.