It is a genuine strength of the playwright Mike Bartlett that he’s totally unafraid to be a touch gauche if it helps him tell a good story. His drolly named Christmas play ‘Snowflake’, about strife between Gen X and Gen Z, is clearly somewhat contrived: the entire first half of Clare Lizzimore’s production is sadsack 48-year-old widower Andy (Elliot Levey) talking to himself as he holds an exposition-heavy imaginary conversation with his daughter Maya as he waits optimistically for her return following a three-year estrangement.
In the second half, Natalie (Amber James) blusters into the Oxfordshire church hall in which he’s hoping to meet Maya. She’s a hip young thing who seemingly randomly rocks up to act as a sounding board for the confused Andy. Her appearance is even more of a contrivance.
And yet whatever clunking of gears might be involved in setting the scene, Bartlett’s dialogue is pure magic. As performed by the whinily loveable Levey, Andy, in particular, is a brilliantly observed piece of characterisation. He feels old and out of touch with the world, worried that he’s offended Maya… somehow. But the excruciating thing about him – certainly if you’re my age – is he’s not that old: the simpler world he pines for was essentially the ’90s, with its HMVs, absence of dating apps and uncomplicated attitude to heavy drinking and regretted snogs. At first he seems like nothing more than a smart, rueful character study of a generation whose ageing hasn’t gone much documented – he’s basically just a little younger than Kurt Cobain or River Phoenix.
And essentially that’s what he is in the first half, as he tries torturously to intuit what his daughter might be feeling. In the second half he is confronted with something closer to the truth. And in part that means… Brexit! Differing opinions regarding the EU referendum between him and Maya aren’t exactly what caused the rift, but they’re heavily involved, and there is something quite thrilling about seeing Bartlett cheerily grasp the nettle and give it a good yank.
Given that the publicity material hardly conceals the presence of actor Ellen Robertson, it’s not really a spoiler to say that Maya does finally appear as a character, and it’s these scenes that hit home the hardest. She does not exactly cover herself in glory, but Andy’s unwillingness to hear her out or consider he might not know what’s best for her – even as he’s trying to be kind – is excruciating: I found myself physically flinching every time he interrupted.
It’s explicitly set at Christmas, and Bartlett manages to pull a tearjerking Christmassy conclusion out of it all. But it comes with a very bittersweet edge, a provocative and tender vision of divided Britain that suggests there is no way forward if we don’t try to understand each other.