Tag: Polly Stenham

No Quarter by Polly Stenham, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 12 January 2013

This one was a real disappointment to us.

We had absolutely loved That Face, Polly Stenham’s first play:

That Face, Polly Stenham, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 19 May 2007

We even quite liked Tusk Tusk, her second – although we felt she hadn’t really moved on, we allowed for that “awkward second piece” syndrome:

Tusk Tusk by Polly Stenham, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 28 March 2009

Now, after nearly four more years, her third, No Quarter. Here is the Royal Court resource for this piece.

Again an upper-middle class drawing room drama – even less promising than the second.

We were at a preview. There was Polly, socialising with her friends and relations, who were there to make sure that the preview was well received by the audience…

…it all seemed aa shame and a waste of talent to us. Perhaps Polly was honing her skills for a TV writing career that will be far more lucrative than the stage…and perhaps to that end she is succeeding.

Here is a link to a search term that finds the (mostly indifferent) reviews.

Indifference summed it up for us too. It was entertaining, there were good lines and vignettes in it. If this had been a young writer’s first play we would have oozed about a promising writer. But this piece was a waste of Polly Stenham’s talent and the talent on show with cast and crew too.

A pity.

Tusk Tusk by Polly Stenham, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 28 March 2009

We enjoyed but were a bit disappointed by this one.

We had absolutely loved That Face, Polly Stenham’s first play, so had eagerly awaited this one for two years.

Tusk Tusk was another play about a dysfunctional family with an addled mother (absentee mother this time) and several wild kids as the result.

It felt a bit like more of the same to us, which was a shame because we (perhaps unreasonably) expected more from Polly Stenham on the back of her stunningly good first play.

Still, some excellent performances from the youngsters (this must have been the first time we saw the excellent Bel Powley, for example) and the usual Royal Court quality of production, even when the play is being done upstairs.

We saw the Saturday preview before press night.

I have found some super Pete Jones Productions photos online – presumably from opening night – click here.

That Face, Polly Stenham, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 19 May 2007

This turned out to be one of the hottest tickets in town for a while.  We didn’t realise it when we booked it.  We see a lot of productions upstairs and often enjoy plays there by young/as yet unknown playwrights.

Indeed, we normally see them early in a run, but nephew Paul had arranged to stay and said he’d like to go to the theatre with us, so we chose this play as “youthfully suitable” and so booked for a few weeks into the run.  Thus, by the time Paul came down to stay, he knew we’d got him a surprisingly hot ticket.

That Face – for Royal Court stub including several reviews click here – really is a super play and this was an excellent production.

Polly Stenham is a very talented young writer, although we now have the hindsight to wish that she had moved on from this “chamber play about dysfunctional families and damaged youngsters” genre – her subsequent plays so far (several years on) have all been echoes of similar. Still, this one subsequently transferred to the West End making Polly, at 21 by then, the youngest West End debutant since…maybe ever.  Michael Billington gushed – click here.

The whole cast was brilliant, but Lindsay Duncan stole the show, as you might expect.

Nephew Paul was very taken by the whole thing.  We had to explain that we don’t always pick quite such winners, especially when we go for the smaller stages and unknown writers.