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21-year-old's first play hits West End
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent18 Feb 2008
A first play by a 21-year-old writer is to transfer to the West End.
Polly Stenham's That Face, a sellout success at the Royal Court last year, is to get a second outing at the Duke of York's Theatre from May.
Few playwrights see their names up in lights in theatreland, let alone one so young.
That Face is the story of a dysfunctional middle-class family embracing alcoholism, drugs and girl-on-girl school bullying.
Stenham was only 19 when she wrote the first draft as part of the Royal Court's Young Writer's Programme.
She went on to win the Charles Wintour award for most promising playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the Critics' Circle award for most promising playwright and the prize for best play from the Theatrical Management Association.
The UK Film Council has given her a grant to adapt the work for the big screen.
At the Duke of York's, Lindsay Duncan will reprise her role as an alcoholic mother with her stage son played by Matt Smith, an Evening Standard Theatre Awards nominee for best newcomer, and other members of the original cast. Stenham, who lives in north London and is the daughter of Cob Stenham, a successful businessman who died in 2006, said it was "just amazing" to be going back into rehearsals and working on the play further.
"There's stuff that might have to be tweaked because I want to make it as good as possible for a much bigger space," she said. The play caused a sensation when it was originally seen in the small Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Court to audiences including Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter.
Stenham said: "It seemed to me that I hadn't seen that much on stage about the kind of people I went to school with."
Producer Sonia Friedman, whose previous hits include Boeing-Boeing and the transfer of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, said she had never produced a work by someone so young.
"I was blown away by this piece," she said. "It was so alive, so real, so authentic, so original - I didn't want it to end.
"It being her debut play is a fantastic story, but I wouldn't want people to think they're getting anything less than a piece of fantastic theatre."
