Impassioned portrayal of youth struggles

AT one point in Punk Rock, the troubled and introspective Lilly proclaims in a rare burst of impassioned speech: “Ninety nine per cent of the young people in this country do a really good job at the actual work of being alive”.

We can only assume that the sixth-form library in the fee-paying grammar school in Stockport, where the play is set, harbours a disproportionate number of exceptions. By the penultimate scene, the stage is littered with almost as many dead bodies as Elsinore Castle in the final scene of Hamlet.

In Simon Stephens’s play, the library is more like a laboratory for us to study at close quarters the angst and insecurities of adolescence. The sparse set and the decision, presumably by director Gennie Holmes, to use the floor of the theatre rather than the stage work well. It intensifies the claustrophobic feeling that we, the audience, are peering over each other’s shoulders to observe something luridly fascinating as the hormones bubble and the tension mounts.

An hour and three-quarters seem to fly by. Flo Henderson as Lilly manages cleverly to convey a mixture of surprise and pity mingled with faint disgust. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, perhaps. Hers is a complex role to pull off and, for the most part, she does it with aplomb. A little more voice projection and it would have been perfect.

Jack Hawker uses his height to makes a good fist of playing Bennet, despite his fresh face and evidently amiable disposition.

There are times when the audience has to suspend disbelief. Ben Lancashire, who plays Chadwick, looks more than capable of swatting Bennet the menace away like a tiresome fly. Instead he cowers and caves in to intimidation while, at the same time, subtly alerting us to the source of his tormentor’s insecurities – the uncomfortable realisation that he fancies boys as much as girls.

Meg Livermore is clearly not fat, but gives a good impression of a girl struggling with weight problems. Georgia Brown plays Bennet’s girlfriend Cissy with sassy self-confidence until she, too, is un-nerved by his behaviour as well as niggling concerns about his sexuality. What really spooks her, however, is the results if her mock A-levels. She only has a B in English. ‘Don’t tell my mother,’ she implores.

It’s a reminder that these are the gilded youth of Stockport, the privileged ones with the wealthy parents. The ones who are expected to go to the best universities. The ones who look down on their less fortunate contemporaries – those facing a future stacking supermarket shelves, for which they may or may not be paid.

You leave the theatre thinking, thank God I’m not 17 again, facing the brave new world that has been created for our young people. Far fewer than 99 per cent are likely to get a really good job to go with “the actual work of being alive”.

Chris Arnot