By Lukas Brasher-Fons
Growing up is hard to do; we know this. Add in closeted homosexuality, Asperger’s Syndrome, self-mutilation, and a slew of other angst-ridden issues, and you have the British-teen melting pot that is Simon Stephens’ “Punk Rock,” currently being performed by Griffin Theatre Company at Theater Wit, under the direction of Jonathan Berry. Despite passionate material, energetic staging, and some truly engaging performances, Berry makes the fatal mistake of treating the play as an actual punk tale, which discredits the human tragedy of Stephens’ text, by making these kids seem a whole lot cooler than they actually are.
This is especially apparent in the montages Berry chooses to include between the scripted scenes: by showing these teens in their British prep-school uniforms, suavely navigating the stage, and jamming to tunes such as Big Black’s “Kerosene,” Berry has inadvertently glorified the terror and cruelty of high school life. Despite the best intentions of the performers, and the high quality of Stephens’ writing, such directorial slickness cheapens the drama, by making it all amount to nothing more than the average music video. If these sequences had been used to complement the action of the plot they might have felt less jarring. But as it stands, they serve only to spice up the pace, in seeming fear that the audience will be unable to pay attention to the story without these unnecessary musical interludes.
“Punk Rock” tells the story of life at a Manchester high school, where every teenage stereotype that you can think of plays itself out, all the way up to a veritably Columbine-esque finale. For instance, we have William the pathological liar (played with subtle eeriness by Joey deBettencourt), the anorexic Cissy (Jess Berry), the ostracized intellectual Chadwick (Ryan Heindl), Lilly the cutter (a lovingly understated Leah Karpel), and a host of others, rounding out this anti-History Boys group of misfits.
While Stephens clearly intends these stereotypes to be portrayed honestly, and without any sort of “Breakfast Club” sentimentality, such an intention becomes impossible when you have a production (the American premiere, nonetheless) with a director who refuses to see these characters as anything more than figures in a pop song, and is only interested in their psychology as long as it highlights how cool his show is.
The result leaves the audience feeling like they have been the victims of a superbly written afterschool special, which, no matter how well planned, acted, or intended, simply cannot rescue itself from the dregs of its own genre. While we see the greatness present, we are still disappointed, because it has not been allowed to shine. But Stephens is not to blame. The fault here lies in the hands of Berry’s over-jazzed direction, and misguided sense of purpose. If Berry had not felt the need to turn the play into a hip urban opera, then maybe the serious talent at work in this production would have been able to take center stage. As it stands, the strength of the performances is drowned out by the incessant hum of MTV sound-bytes, and daytime drama. And when dealing with soap opera, the emotional payoff can be only so great.