Don’t Let Those Neat Uniforms Fool You
Ben BrantleyNovember 18, 2014: Something is seriously wrong with the characters in Punk Rock, Simon Stephens’s tender, ferocious and frightening play at the Lucille Lortel Theater. They wear their nerves dangerously close to the skin, and their moods swing unhinged. They think of themselves as the best and the worst of all possible beings. And almost all the time, they hurt, in both the active and passive senses of the word. You know that checklist, right? These miserable people are suffering from the classic and unavoidable condition of being teenagers. Most of their symptoms will eventually go into remission. That is, if they’re lucky enough to survive what ails them. Punk Rock, which opened on Monday night in an MCC production directed by Trip Cullman, inspires wonder that anybody makes it to the end of adolescence. Enacted by a marvelous young cast that dares to go places most grown-ups like to forget exist, this portrait of British private-school students during exam season is one of the most piercing studies of kids’ inhumanity to kids since poor Piggy snuffed it in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. It is hardly new territory being explored here. Exploiting the discontents of puberty as entertainment is a multibillion-dollar business. Our film, television, book and recording industries would all be in sorry shape without teenage angst to draw from.
READ THE REVIEW