Review: Snowflake at the Ensemble Theatre
Review by Kate Gaul
A sharp argument melts into sentiment.
Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake takes an unusual family Christmas reunion and turns it into a battleground for the culture wars. When Andy, a middle-aged father, is reunited with his estranged daughter Maya and her girlfriend Natalie, generational fault lines quickly emerge around politics, identity, language and the fraught business of disagreeing with one another. This is a work that asks how much common ground can survive when people no longer seem to share the same understanding of the world.
The critical question at its heart is whether Bartlett genuinely interrogates the polarisation he puts on stage, or mistakes giving both sides a voice for achieving understanding.
First staged in Britain in 2018, against the backdrop of Brexit and deepening political divisions, Jo Bradley’s production moves from its original independent staging at the Old Fitz Theatre (2024) to Ensemble Theatre, reuniting the original cast in a confident production.
James Lugton reprises his role as Andy in a polished, deeply felt characterisation, and it was a pleasure to catch this work. He is joined by a superb Lilian Alejandra Valverde as Natalie and Claudia Elbourne as Maya, who gives the estranged daughter real weight, her hurt and guardedness registering even when the scene belongs to the others.
The title Snowflake refers to a pejorative term used to describe younger generations as overly sensitive, fragile or easily offended. Bartlett reclaims the insult, suggesting that emotional sensitivity is not weakness but an essential part of being human. The snowflake also evokes individuality and fragility: each is unique, yet all are vulnerable. In the play, the metaphor becomes a question of whether we can acknowledge one another's vulnerability without dismissing or diminishing it.
For much of its 100-minute-plus running time, the answer to that question is yes, with Bartlett offering a genuinely engaging examination of the clash between competing world views. The play is often funny, and the laughs make its colder moments cut deeper.
The evening’s best scene is the confrontation between Natalie and Andy, and much of the credit goes to Valverde, whose Natalie is charismatic and intelligent, a match for Andy rather than a foil. Here the play does what it says on the tin: two people speak past each other, each certain of being the reasonable one, and the audience’s sympathies shift from line to line.
Bartlett’s central metaphor is at its most potent here. The play both mocks the generational insult and reclaims it, suggesting that to feel pain and have emotions is precisely what makes us human.
Snowflake is distinctly British (accents and all!), and that can partly feel remote in Sydney. Some ideas travel well. Andy’s insistence that Britain managed perfectly well for centuries before joining the EU is less a considered political argument than an expression of wounded national pride. Yet the underlying sentiment is readily recognisable: the resentment of being told that the values and instincts you have long held are suddenly outdated, misguided or even shameful. No detailed knowledge of British politics or the EU is needed to understand this feeling.
That is what makes the ending so disappointing. For most of the play, Bartlett shows us three people talking past one another, each entrenched in their own position and unable, or unwilling, to really hear what the others are saying. Then, rather too conveniently, an urgent embrace between the three characters stands in for the difficult work of understanding one another. Perhaps the embrace is intended not as a resolution of their differences, but as a decision to love one another despite them. It's a distinction worth making, but the production doesn't quite convince us of it. Bradley's production instead compounds the problem. A long embrace is followed by a gentle snowfall, literalising the title's metaphor and suggesting a resolution that the preceding scenes has done little to earn.
We are left with a greeting-card image at precisely the moment the argument should still be ringing. A more searching interpretation might have presented the truce as fragile and unfinished: a choice to remain connected despite disagreement, rather than a suggestion that disagreement has somehow dissolved.
Can a play about the failure to listen create space for meaningful disagreement? Snowflake manages it, for a while, and Valverde's Natalie holds that space superbly. But ultimately Bartlett retreats into the reassuring middle ground he has spent the evening so provocatively exposing, and Bradley's production is content to follow.
