That face to watch

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10 April 2012

There is no doubt that That Face is a career-maker for its writer, Polly Stenham, now 21. So loud was the buzz around her debut play that it sold out its eight-week run last April, upstairs at the Royal Court's tiny 40-seat theatre. One of the most talked about productions of the year, it was also the least seen.

A mother-daughter-son triangle set among the dysfunctional upper-middle-classes, That Face went on to win Stenham an Evening Standard Theatre Award — and, in a dream scenario for any young writer, landed a West End transfer, with a 10-week run at the Duke of York's that has just begun.

Stenham is not the only success story, in all this. In the cast, alongside Lindsay Duncan, lured back to the stage for the first time in six years, That Face has also made a star of young actor Matt Smith. He first came to attention as the nerdy Danny in BBC2's political drama Party Animals, but it was his role as the damaged 18-year-old son in thrall to a manipulative alcoholic mother that took him into a different league.

After the Royal Court run (for which he was also nominated for an Evening Standard award), he was cast opposite Christian Slater in the stage version of Swimming With Sharks. And he's still only 25.

I'm expecting a bit of a fop but Smith is funny and charming. Like his character, Henry, in the play, he's good with older women. In fact, he and Duncan, who plays his mother, have become firm friends. "I completely admire her. She's a constant source of information — not only about acting but about life and love. She's a cool cat. There's something very rock 'n' roll about her."

Tall, languid with floppy good looks, Smith could so easily have ended up typecast as the male ingénue. But he can play posh and he can play rough. In the past year alone he's been a New Labour researcher, an Oedipal son and a Hollywood wannabe.

He grew up in an ordinary family in Northampton and never even went to drama school. He was all set to become a professional footballer (he played for Leicester City and Nottingham Forest youth teams) until he suffered a serious back injury. His sister is a professional dancer who recently did the Take That world tour. "She had a ball," he grins.

After he was injured his world fell apart. "But I had a wonderful teacher called Mr Hardingham, who put my name down for a play without my knowing about it. It was Twelve Angry Men and I was Juror Number 10. And then he put me into a drama festival and I didn't turn up," he adds shaking his head apologetically, "because I was a footballer and acting wasn't that cool. But he kept pushing me and he got me the forms to apply for the National Youth Theatre. I started going to London and spending the summer doing plays with them."

He went on to study drama and creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

By his third year he had an agent and was cast in a new play, Fresh Kills, upstairs at the Royal Court, before he'd even graduated. "That took me out of college for six weeks. Then I was invited to appear in On the Shore of the Wide World, first at Manchester's Royal Exchange and then when it transferred to the National."

He stayed on another 18 months at the National, taking over the role of Lockwood in The History Boys. He also appeared in the teen play cycle Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship. "As a young actor, there is no better place to learn your craft."

I meet Smith in his lunch hour during rehearsals for That Face, which reunites most of the original cast, with Hannah Murray (Cassie in Skins) joining as Mia, Henry's sister.

Smith's character is an aspiring artist who leaves school to care for his alcoholic mother Martha (Duncan) after his father abandons the family. A powerful story of emotional deprivation where children are forced to "parent" their own wealthy parents with its sub-plot of alcoholism, drugs and Abu-Ghraib-style bullying in a posh girls' boarding school (Stenham herself went to Wycombe Abbey), it's as shocking as any play set on a sink estate.

The unexpected airing of middle-class dirty laundry had the critics in raptures when the play first opened. Henry, who has no friends, and doesn't go out very much, makes increasingly desperate, misguided attempts to maintain what is an appalling status quo.

"The thing I find tricky to get my head round is why doesn't he just leave?" says Smith frankly. "An awful lot of it is codependency. So as part of our research we went to meetings where we met alcoholics and people who are either married to them or are alcoholic's children. With Henry there's a real belief — or denial maybe — that he can change his mother. When she is finally pulled away from him to go to rehab, his identity collapses. His sacrifice has been for nothing."

It would be easy to make the play sound melodramatic but it's full of dark, un-PC humour. "I think it actually will be even funnier in a bigger house, people will feel less exposed and more together." But you sense that it's harrowing for the actors to go to such a dark place every night. Especially Smith, who ends up wearing his mother's nightdress and jewels on stage, and wets himself as a protest against the machinations of his family. He admits his own mother found it hard to watch.

And now the actors have their work cut out in the West End. "After the first run-through, Lindsay and I turned to each other and said: How are we going to do this eight times a week? And on Wednesday matinees? F***ing hard! Because you just have to pour your whole body, your whole heart at it. And just run as fast as you can. I'm going to have to be disciplined. I'm going to have to drink less. No pints after work ..."

Smith is clearly relishing his second run in the West End, but what of his first? He is more muted about his time in Swimming with Sharks, which, as a West End star vehicle, was quite a different proposition from That Face.

"He's cool, Christian, I liked him. He's a good guy but I had a tough time ... for a variety of reasons," he says carefully. "I'd never done that length of run before. At the Court, you're in, you're out. So it was quite at a learning curve."

Smith is part of an edgy new generation of twentysomething actors, which includes Andrea Riseborough and Andrew Buchan (his Party Animals costars), and brothers Luke and Harry Treadaway. They excel at classical theatre as well as TV and film and all hang out together.

He met the Treadaways at the NYT. "You're only 18 so they give you this pep talk about not having sex with anyone. I was leaning out of the window, and then from the room opposite, this head appeared, having a fag. It was Harry. Then the head of this other twin, Luke appeared. We've been friends ever since, it's like a little collective." In fact it was Smith who introduced Harry to his current girlfriend, Stenham.

In his spare time Smith plays the piano and flute and reads a lot of poetry. He raves about Carol Anne Duffy's collection Rapture, which documents the highs and lows of a sexual relationship that unravels. "With a great poem you think: Oh I get it, that's love. I've felt that.'" He hopes That Face will have the same effect — "I hope it will move you, make you catch your breath."

And Smith is in love. After the first run of That Face he and Stenham went on holiday to Brazil. " I stayed for six weeks, I meant to go for two, but I fell in love," he says dreamily. "Now it's a bloody nightmare because she's 6,000 miles away. But what can you do when you're in love?"

Fortunately work is all-consuming. "I just want to try and make brave choices and not get too het up about ladders. Look at the careers of people like Michael Gambon and Ian McKellen," he reminds himself. "Learn your craft. I'm still rough around the edges and Iwant to keep on improving."

That Face is at the Duke of York's Theatre (0870 0601483, www.thatface.co.uk). Every performance will have 100 best seats available at £25.

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