Punk Rock

Exam stress, self-loathing and the fear of failure form the basis of director Sarah Frankcom’s revival of Simon Stephens’ high school drama, Punk Rock. A co-production between Royal Exchange Theatre and Lyric, this is an intriguing play that captures a teenage uprising, and questions the lengths that humans are prepared to go to in order to survive. Set in a private grammar school in Stockport, the play follows new girl, Lilly Cahill (Laura Pyper) as she starts her first term, and prepares for her A-levels with the help of fellow pupil, William Carlisle (Robert Simonian). But Lilly’s arrival and the start of their prelims overshadows a series of small but difficult events in the school that leads the characters to a terrifying and shocking conclusion.

Receiving great critical acclaim during its original run in 2009, Frankcom’s production of Stephens’ brutal coming of age play has been compared to such British classics as Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and Lindsay Anderson’s If... in its rather bleak portrayal of the difficulties facing modern teenagers. But while Punk Rock’s initial premise may seem a little overdone, Stephens manages to bypass the modern cliché of teenage angst, and instead highlights the mounting pressure that young people face in all aspects of their life. From parental and social stresses to the terror of filling out a UCAS form, Stephens resurrects our adolescent fears of failure and ridicule, making them very real and just as unrelenting as they were to those that experienced them years before. But by doing this, he forces us to shake off the nostalgia of our school years and, for an all too fleeting moment, feel a real sense of understanding of the strain that many young people put themselves under in order to succeed, if only in the eyes of their peers. Combining a young and highly talented cast with an explosive plot, the real power of the play lies in Stephens’ script, which reveals both the deadly desires and shocking depths of the human mind.