Theatre review: Snowflake

Mike Bartlett's already on his second Brexit play (third, if you count Love, Love, Love as foreshadowing, which next year's revival will almost certainly feel like.) Like Albion (also returning in 2020) his latest puts the UK's breaking up into factions in microcosm, and Snowflake manages both to create a metaphor and play it literally as a widower longs to reunite with his estranged daughter at Christmas. The play's first act is a monologue until its closing moments, and Bartlett plays with the concept of the unreliable narrator: In an empty church hall on Christmas Eve, Andy (Elliot Levey) rehearses for how he wants to greet his daughter Maya (Ellen Robertson) when he sees her for the first time in three years. Their relationship went sour after her mother died suddenly, and one argument in particular saw her walk out and break off all contact. She's now back in Oxford and Andy's hired out this hall as a neutral space for them to try and restart their relationship.

But it gradually becomes apparent he's going on little more than blind hope, and he's had no contact with her - he's left her messages telling her where to find him if she wants to, but the evening wears on and there's no sign of her.

Levey makes Andy likeably self-effacing, dealing with middle age with nostalgia and gentle humour, and Clare Lizzimore's production is gently moving. Of course, he's had full control of the story until the second act, and we get a different perspective on him when someone else arrives - but not who he expects. Natalie (Amber James) is there to borrow crockery for a big Christmas lunch, but as she gets chatting about what Andy's doing there on his own, she gets to the bottom of the family rift in minutes in a way he never managed in years: Andy voted Leave; it's not just this but his reaction to Maya's argument against it that she couldn't take.

The fact that he got the first act to himself becomes on-theme as Andy goes from likeable to infuriating and it becomes clear he's so self-absorbed he's incapable of listening to what anyone else has to say; he doesn't so much constantly interrupt as talk non-stop over other people, even when Maya eventually turns up and he has a chance for the new start he claims to want. Although Bartlett's sympathies are clearly more with the young women, Snowflake does have a degree of even-handedness that hopes for the possibility of the two sides being one day able to communicate again. (I can't be as even-handed myself, and an unrepentant Brexiteer of my own age group is a particularly hard character for me to forgive.)

The Kiln's unique stage, with an old proscenium arch upstage, is one designer Jeremy Herbert uses to create an incredibly naturalistic church hall set, and both Bartlett's play and Lizzimore's production are funny - James gets the lion's share of the best lines - and moving. As Christmas stories go Snowflake definitely puts the bleak into the bleak midwinter, but it just about earns its element of hope as well. Still, I'm glad this should be my last political show of the year - I'm hammered with enough depression and anxiety about the current situation all day without needing an extra dose in the evening.

Snowflake by Mike Bartlett is booking until the 25th of January at the Kiln Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.