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| Patalog Theatre Company's production of Simon Stephens' Punk Rock |
You’re a teenager and your hormones are racing and you’re in
school and you’re supposed to be studying but there’s a girl… there’s a boy…
there’s your awkward body and your perspiration and emotions and masturbation
and kissing and daydreams and nightmares… you want to act out but you’re taking
your mock A Level exams at a grammar school in Stockport and there’s some
pressure to do well but… you just want to dance and fuck and turn over tables
and feel everything.
Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock is a two-and-a-half-hour
drive into the malaise of being a teenager, where you think you know all the
answers, but can be taken down a peg or two by a look from a girl you fancy or
from a bully who might fancy you. Where you might feel nervous or uncomfortable
in your body, but inside you’re ready to rock the hell out. It’s a delicate and
dangerous balance.
Patalog Theatre Company’s production of Stephens’ play is
slick in parts and rough around the edges in others, which seems fitting.
Director Ruby Rees has unleashed the anarchy of the script onto Fortyfive Downstairs
and has assembled a large, wonderfully-talented cast to bring the play alive.
The dialogue is at once poetic and true-to-life; the words of these characters sing, but we recognise these people and
their situations, even if we didn’t grow up in Greater Manchester. At first,
the characters seem like types, but the play digs deeper and the actors more
than match the material. It was thrilling to see eight actors working together
so well, without a weak link among them.
The play itself slides a little off the rails in the final
few scenes; an eruption of violence is visceral and shocking but it felt like
Stephens’ ratcheting up the dramatic tension rather than a true evolution of
the story we have seen so far. The dance-break transitions disappear by the end
and we’re stuck watching stage hands resetting for the final scene and it upsets
the flow of a play that has previously flown by.
How do I talk about the actors without making a list? Here
they are, each mesmerising, captivating and repulsive in their own way, as only
teenagers can be. Take a bow Laurence Boxhall, Jessica Clarke, Ruby Duncan, Zoe
Hawkins, Karl Richmond, Annie Shapiro, Flynn Smeaton, Ben Walter. I will
undoubtedly see many, if not all, of you on stages again soon. I look forward
to saying I first saw you in Punk Rock at Fortyfive Downstairs.
I saw two plays this week by playwrights from Manchester. If This Wide Night was about the marginalised in society, Punk Rock is
about privileged children who are compelled by primal urges – in a world that
is no longer built for them and is on the precipice of collapse. Why follow
society’s rules when it’s failing you and falling apart around you?
Punk Rock is an iconic play from one of Britain’s
most acclaimed playwrights. Patalog Theatre has made a thrilling, confronting
production. It’s on until December 15th.
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