Zachary Grant and Raven Scott in Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock
Photograph by Enci Box

A short, sharp shock, Simon Stephens’ play PUNK ROCK mobilizes its six British teens—students at a private school in greater Manchester—in acts against one another as a subliminal form of training for future acts against the state. It’s about cruel arrogance and narcissism and hormones. About the alienating expense of capitalism—how it stamps out the soul and grinds out a copy. It’s about losing the thread, and how even the most earnest nihilist can succumb to the lure of celebrity.

A difficult play requires a diamond-hard cast, and the players here are, to the last, exceptional—in particular Zachary Grant, who brilliantly inhabits every step of his character’s unwinding.

 

PUNK ROCK, through May 14.

Friday and Saturday at 8 pm; Sunday at 2 pm.

Additional performances: Wednesday, April 12 and May 3 at 8 pm; Thursday, April 27 at 8 pm.

ODYSSEY THEATRE ENSEMBLE, 2055 South Sepulveda, Westwood-Sawtelle, Los Angeles.

odysseytheatre.com/punk_rock.php