Ensemble Theatre, November 4
8/10
The older generation has despaired about the younger generation since we lived in caves – and the feeling’s mutual. It’s the snideness of intergenerational antagonism that British playwright Mike Bartlett zeroes in on in his 2018 play Snowflake. It’s not enough to revile each other: we seem to need to hurt each other, too.
When we meet 48-year-old Andy, James Lugton plays him with the haunted look of a hunted animal. His wife died six years before; his daughter, Maya, disappeared without explanation three years later, announcing her departure by text. He sent 47 unanswered ones back.
Andy, who lives in Oxford, hears that Maya’s been spotted in cafe there, so leaves a new message suggesting they meet in a church hall. Neutral ground. It’s Christmas Eve, and he is even wearing his woolly jumper with the reindeer on it because he figures no one can be cross with him in that – which shows his slender grasp of the situation.
He’s self-deprecating when talking in his stream-of-consciousness way, telling us about a date he’s had, and that he’s aware of the “massive aesthetic hurdle someone would have to clear before they could even start to contemplate being intimate” with him. Lugton moves us with the inherent tragedy of Andy’s hope and desperation, even while he’s making us laugh.
Self-deprecation was clearly not Andy’s strong suit with Maya. We learn this when Maya’s girlfriend, 25-year-old Natalie (Lilian Alejandra Valverde), visits the hall on a pretext of borrowing plates and cutlery for a Christmas dinner. Really, she’s scouting for Maya, and it emerges that Andy used to mock his daughter; laugh at her anti-Brexit politics and her purple “toilet-brush” hair.
Unlike Barlett’s masterful play Albion, another microscopic look at being British in the new century, there’s a minor flaw here. Natalie’s expertise in her subterfuge and the slip-up that undoes her feel contrived. But Valverde’s performance is gripping, from her accent to the way she fidgets in agitation, and then is statue-still when Andy theorises that Brexit came between Maya and himself.
Natalie has just rammed home the metaphorical implications of Andy’s work in a museum before Maya walks in. The electricity is crackling. Claudia Elbourne’s Maya is thorny, confrontational, supercilious and hurt: her father’s daughter. Natalie’s motivation was not to reconcile them, however, but to teach 21-year-old Maya about conflict resolution, so she doesn’t walk out on her, too.
Director Jo Bradley’s production, designed by Soham Apte, is almost as perfect as the charming model Andy has made of a Christmas scene with a girl skating – presumably on thicker ice than Maya. That the production has come to the Ensemble after playing at the Old Fitz two years ago warms the heart like Bartlett’s play: it deserved a second airing and a wider audience, even if it could still wrench us more at the end.
Until November 21.
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/snowflake/