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The war between script and presentation is one that's playing itself out on Broadway, too, in another of Stephens's works, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. But, as directed and designed, that show is more dazzling than this one. Granted, Punk Rock is set in the library of the Sixth Form of a Stockport grammar school, leaving Cullman, scenic designer Mark Wendland, and lighting designer Japhy Weideman few options but to go oppressively institutional. In its cavernous, shadowy design, complete with yawning wide-open spaces, and half-empty shelves bearing piles of sloppily arranged books, the set ignites your view of the people who use it as otherworldly outsiders, people who don't belong among the other students with whom they must associate. Before a single line is uttered, you already know that you're dealing with people who are not "normal." If that wouldn't be a problem in some circumstances, it is when you're all but demanded to look for the monsters lurking just beneath everyday façades.
Yes, Punk Rock is, on a significant level, about bullying. But a side plot finds William Carlisle (Douglas Smith) pining over new girl Lilly Cahill (Colby Minifie), who has also caught the eye of star athlete Nicholas Chatman (Pico Alexander)—the closest to a friend Bennett can count. And having to compete with Nicholas for Lilly's affections is an obstacle William might not have the wherewithal to work around. For most of the play, Stephens keeps the tensions simmering quietly, and develops each of the characters only enough for us to see how they fit into the hierarchy of the community they've created. We see bonds Lilly, William, and Nicholas form and fray in turn, but all of them growing through exposure, while the lingering threat of Bennett is mostly relegated to the fringes. So when the stories collide late in the show, and we see not only Bennett at full bore but the retribution that results from his actions, we should be stunned by what transpires. Except we're not. Cullman and his actors have stripped certain key characters of many of their enigmatic qualities, leaving no question at all about who will snap, when, and why. This is not an exaggeration: From the first scene, which covers little more ground than William introducing Lilly to everyone, awkward physical tics and strained vocal inflections make it unavoidably obvious that someone has something drastically wrong with them—and it is indeed that person who commits the acts that are supposed to horrify us later. If Stephens could drop fewer blatant hints along the way (among other things, the perpetrator has a history of being rather less than honest about upbringing and family), the script, as read, works fairly hard to maintain an aura of mystery. But because a couple of key performers telegraph the final events as openly as they do, Punk Rock becomes less about the societal and personal pressures that lead to bullying than a treatise on mental illness, and that's weight that the play, as written, simply isn't designed to bear. With the exception of the actor whose character effects the violence that rocks the climactic scene, whose portrayal is utterly bereft of subtlety, the performances are generally well-tuned. And no one else has any trouble conveying the most dramatic and gut-wrenching aspects of the intertwining stories on which the evening is built. Everything is professionally enough handled that you won't have a bad time. You also won't, sadly, have a moving or transformative one. The final scenes should be kicks to the gut, as we ponder the meaning of what we've witnessed and how unnecessary so much of it should be in a sensible world. But what ought to be a call to action instead shoves you away, leaving you feeling nothing for the "preventable" tragedy that, as it's rendered here, isn't actually preventable at all.
Punk Rock
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