“Punk Rock” received pretty good reviews when it premiered in London five years ago. Maybe our British friends haven’t seen as many teen dramas as we have, because the play will be awfully familiar to anybody who’s been exposed to “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink” and other angsty high school flicks.
The main update is that the violence level is in the red. Make that in the blood-red.
Simon Stephens — whose adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is now on Broadway — has set his play in the north of England, where he once taught. But despite the distance and accents, these private-school students will be recognizable to any American.
You’ve got the rebellious, self-harming newbie, Lilly (Colby Minifie), who picks hottie Nicholas (Pico Alexander) over romantic loner William (Douglas Smith). The obligatory bully, Bennett (Will Pullen), forms a power couple with the blonde alpha girl, Cissy (Lilly Englert). On the outcast side we have bespectacled math nerd Chadwick (Noah Robbins) and needy, fat Tanya (Annie Funke).
The atmosphere is tense from the beginning, compounded by bits of aggressive punk songs playing between scenes. Stephens doesn’t waste time dropping heavy-handed clues about a dramatic conclusion. “One day he’s going to snap,” one student says of another.
And the foreshadowing only gets more obvious as we go along. By the end, the warning is clear: “Don’t come into school” tomorrow, a student advises another.
Stephens doesn’t endow the kids with much more than primary, clichéd characteristics, and yet Trip Cullman’s production for MCC is fairly absorbing thanks to the ace young cast — “Punk Rock” may end up spawning a new generation of stars the way “Spring Awakening” once did.
Minifie, in particular, makes a strong impression as a beautiful girl aware of her budding sexual power but still insecure. Smith is guardedly broody in the trickiest role, the kind of anxious boy who can also earnestly declare, “I sometimes think I’m the best person in this town. Is that terrible?”
As the harassment gets worse, the teens are either victimized or become complicit in the tormenting. The strongest theme of the play is how hard it is to stop violence.
By the time it hits, the grisly conclusion feels not quite earned, and yet inevitable.
