‘That Face’ review
‘will leave you unsettled - caught somewhere between nausea and grief’.
A story as desperate and disturbing as its characters, Fourth Wall Theatre Company’s performance of Polly Stenham’s play That Face, directed by Ellie Kinch, will leave you unsettled - caught somewhere between nausea and grief.
That Face, a recipient of three Olivier Award nominations after its 2007 debut, follows the collapsing lives of a family torn apart by a drug-induced schizophrenic mother and an absent father. Henry and Mia, their children, are left clinging to the fragments of a shattered home.
Initially, the lights rise against a blue haze, exposing a minimalist set with three girls: one slumped, masked in a makeshift balaclava and pajamas, drooping between her two tormentors. Lighting Designer and Operator Luna Oladiji establishes an atmosphere of clinical detachment and emotional coldness, allowing the audience no visual comfort. The turbulence of power dynamics and control - their rises and falls - was a clear and persisting theme.
Izzy (Lilly Wonders), the ringleader and form captain, dominates. Her whining manipulation is as sickening as it is addictive. She circles Alice (Sophie Browning) like a hawk about to descend on her prey. The only issue is that prey is already nearly dead, a realisation that drains Izzy’s authority of its thrill. This is the only time we see Izzy panic, and yes, it’s justified. Of course, it is not for Alice’s welfare, but for the comic realisation that this may indeed “f*** up [her] UCAS”. Browning’s portrayal of thirteen-year-old Alice gives a refined yet harrowing take on this non-verbal role. As she is mummified in swabs beneath a hospital duvet resembling a “war victim” she sits up after Izzy and Mia leave. Knowing she has heard their conversation, her quiet, isolated sobs is all we hear.
However, it is the maudlin sobs of sorrow from Martha’s mouth that make you squirm. Brilliantly portrayed by Tess Garrett, Martha is relentless in her Oedipus-esque pining for her son. It’s sickening, “perverse”, and (as one audience member reflected) “downright incestuous”. Martha’s moans of “baby boy, so good” and “my soldier boy” turn the stomach. That is not to say Garrett’s performance is without sympathy. With shaking oscillations of vocal tone, slurred articulation, and a demeanor that swings from mania to masterful manipulation as rapidly as Henry enters and exits, Martha demands a versatility of skill that Garrett has in profusion. At her best, Martha echoes Joanna Lumley’s Patsy Stone: momentarily hilarious in her pill-popping, smoking, and boozing hallucinations, but at her worst she is parasitic and tragic. As she is daubed in a decaying decadence of costume jewellery, Martha’s descent from the upper echelons of society is complete, and she has brought Henry down with her.
Benedict Porter’s characterization of Henry is emotive in its agony and desperation. Initially, he is the carer and stalwart, a grounding presence against Martha’s hysteria. By the end he is as damaged as those that damaged him. A pawn in Martha’s war of sexual jealousy and guilt — the glass child, the dutiful older brother — Henry is slowly revealed as collateral damage in a conflict not of his making. He stands as a harrowing reminder of the children who grow up bearing the quiet consequences of a parent’s mental illness. Porter’s emotional sensitivity to the role is clear. He charts Henry’s internal fracturing through an increasingly reactive physicality. In passing moments of normality (particularly after a night with Izzy) Porter allows the audience to glimpse Henry’s essential ordinariness, a reminder that beneath the turmoil he is still a teenager. These moments are underscored by Sahe Bannigan-Davis’ sound design, operated by Tom Haigh, which moves subtly between oppressive silence and intrusive noise, mirroring Henry’s psychological instability.
Alice Toner as Mia gives a mature, measured, and beautifully complex interpretation of Mia. Mia could be said to be a teenage nightmare – with no permanent address, she faces expulsion and her relationship with her mother is non-existent. However, Toner immediately draws the audience to sympathy. She reveals a tenderness that Izzy lacks. Whether it’s the subtle shaking of anxiety coupled with authentic remorse, Mia, like Henry, is left with the burden of a family she has been forced to carry. At the end of the play Mia is the only hope of survival. Toner portrays her arc from rebellious teenage to an emergent, responsible maturity, leaving the audience to hope she might finally escape the suffocating conditions that have shaped her.
The narrative would be incomplete without Jasper Kyriakoudis’ impactful portrayal of Hugh. In stark contrast to the instability surrounding him, Hugh’s formulaic attempt to salvage the family he abandoned wavers between enforced cooperation, misplaced hope, and brief gestures of responsible parenting long absent from Henry and Mia’s lives. Kyriakoudis balances these tensions with precision, inviting the audience to invest in Hugh as a potential agent of repair.
In its unsettling engagement with familial trauma Fourth Wall’s That Face leaves you to walk away deeply disturbed.
By Katie Bainbridge.