Snowflake

Theatre is exquisite when live arguments on stage keep differently tugging our empathies as to who’s right.  Often it's nobody, of course, but the young daughter Maya in Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake is certain to draw support from those in the audience signed up to her identity politics.

Her dad, Andy, is a white middle-aged widower still distraught that Maya inexplicably upped and left home three years ago.  It’s Christmas and he hears she’s in town so he’s decorating a bleak church hall in Oxfordshire trying to create a neutral space for reconciliation. 

Behind the hall’s stage curtain, he’s even made a festive model of their home, with both of them there, snug and happy.  It’s all a bit depressing, even unlikely, especially when he can’t get the lights to work.

Alone, Andy rehearses various greetings to his daughter, and meanders through anecdotes - seemingly pointless but sparked with familiar grizzles about Gen Z, their lack of grace, engagement and curiosity.  James Lugton is perfect as the tussled and bearded Andy, ever reasonable and sympathetic, but our patience is stretched through his long and essentially humourless monologue – which perhaps is the idea!

It’s a relief when a stranger Natalie arrives, and somehow stays and settles in like an earnest counsellor listening to Andy’s story of what went wrong with Maya, and nudging him to other versions and to seeing the realities of his racism. Lilian Alejandra Valverde plays her with just the right openness and restrained judgement. 

The identity battles turn explosive with the final arrival of Maya, with Claudia Elbourne as the timid Snowflake back with grit. Maya is now in her first lesbian relationship, a committed protester and enemy of the patriarchy (and Andy) which has burdened her and Gen Z with Brexit.

More basically, Maya just wanted her dad to listen and, in a delicious generational clash, Andy, now impossibly blinkered, keeps interrupting her to repeat how much he is listening. 

Director Jo Bradley brings the drama of Snowflake to a cracking heartfelt denouement, even if the first half lacks inventiveness.  Soham Apte’s minimal set adequately conveys an unloved hall but lacks cheer or much detail with which to make comedy.  Luckily this cast is first rate and Bartlett’s dialogue delivers political sizzles and sharp perceptions about our modern struggle to communicate – and empathise.  

Martin Portus

Photographer: Robert Miniter