Irish premiere of Punk Rock at the Lyric

Rehearsals began this week at the Lyric Theatre for the Irish premiere of Punk Rock by the double Olivier Award-winning playwright, Simon Stephens.

Stephens – whose mother is from Belfast and grandmother from Sunnyside Street, just beside the Lyric – said he is “thrilled” to have the first professional production of one of his plays opening in the city.

“It means the world to me that Punk Rock is opening in Belfast,” he said. “My mum was born in Belfast. My grandma was born into a family of seven girls on Sunnyside Street. My great-grandfather worked as a carpenter on the Titanic. My granddad, his English son-in-law got a job at Methodist School. In many ways this feels like a homecoming to a hometown I’ve never been to before. It’s been produced in four different continents and all over Europe now. It is thrilling that it will open down the street from my grandma’s house.”

The former school-teacher described the play as being about “kids trying to leave home”.

“It’s a play about the energy and fear of what it is to be seventeen years old,” he said. “It’s an honest interrogation into the souls of young people at the start of the twenty-first century.”

Punk Rock is an intense and powerful piece of theatre about the complex lives of a clique of sixth-formers from a fee-paying school preparing for their mock A-Level exams. They struggle with their identity, questioning the status quo, while coping with the extreme pressures of exams, parents and peers. Underlying the small talk and banter in the school library, the play explores the darker issues of mental health and the stark realities of life as an adolescent which leads to a shocking climax.

Punk Rock runs on the Danske Bank Stage from Thursday August 14 to Saturday September 6 at 7.45pm, with weekend matinees at 2.30pm.

Tickets, priced from £10 to £24.50, are on sale from the Box Office on 9038 1081 or online at www.lyrictheatre.co.uk. Please note this play contains strong language and some violent scenes.