Plays 3: Harper Regan / Marine Parade / On the Shore of the Wide World / Punk Rock

by Simon Stephens

Harper Regan follows a woman's road trip through the heart of England in a violent and comic exploration of the moralities of sex and death. Quietly harrowing, this play is a barometer for our times exploring dark secrets and familial estrangement.

Marine Parade is a musical about sex, betrayal and hope, set in a run-down B&B on Brighton's waterfront. A moving and poignant play, it 'captures the peculiar aroma of Brighton, with its mix of the bracing and the melancholy' ( Guardian).

Olivier award-winning play On the Shore of the Wide World is an epic piece about love, family, Roy Keane and the size of the galaxy.

Punk Rock is based on Simon Stephens's experience as a teacher and he describes this play as ' The History Boys on crack'. It explores the underlying tensions and potential violence in a group of affluent, articulate seventeen year old students.

Genres: Plays

464 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2011

Reviews

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Stephens has his themes: the tragedy of losing a child, the inescapability of home, the wounds families inflict on each other and how they might be hidden, the vulnerability of young people. They all feel thoroughly dramatised and particularly potent in these plays.

On the Shore of the Wide World - 4/5: painfully sad, gently panoramic.

Marine Parade - 3/5: a strange, slight detour into music theatre, in which Cynthia Erivo originally starred. Sure, why not.

Harper Regan - 4.5/5: a woman is torn between home (Stockport) and home (Uxbridge) and so she runs home. WHAT a part for an actor.

Punk Rock - 4/5: nasty, brutal, desperately sad. Not unlike the children it dramatises.

[Emilia Robson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Stephens smashing it, as per. Marine Parade was actually the first of his plays I read and it is really fucking brilliant. I love all the different characters and situations and relationships within the play, so interesting and it’s written fantastically (which is very impressive because it ran the risk of being very confusing hahah!)

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the Shore of the Wide World: I'm not sure why, but for some reason I was really not expecting to like Simon Stephens' work, but this play is really genuinely good. I think I was expecting the writing to be really sparse, with that sort of tense emotional energy that is supposed to be edgy but from a reader's standpoint is just characters saying obscure pointless things and reacting inexplicably. But even though this deals with heavy emotions--loss, betrayal, distrust, disillusionment--the action is clear and comprehensible, the characters are difficult but human, and the action makes sense. There are so many plays about death and grief, and they often end sadly, but one of the things Stephens emphasizes in the intro to this collection is the importance of optimism, but optimism based on the acknowledgment that the world is deeply flawed and that life is, more often than not, unpleasant. That philosophy really comes through in this play, which sees some deep low points for the characters, but nonetheless ends up with a relative unity and even a kind of faint hope.

Marine Parade: I was much less sold on this play than On the Shore, which I think is because I don't really care for musicals. Co-written with musician Mark Eitzel, the intro to this collection says that Marine Parade was meant to be a musical that didn't compromise either the plot of the play or the quality of the music, but without any sense of how the music actually should sound it's quite difficult to appreciate this play.
The one piece I really especially like is the character of Archie, who is just a weird dude who sits on the pier and talks philosophically about the futility of human existence, the ability to overcome instinct as the distinctive trait of the human animal, and the breakdown of society as such. Many of the characters in this play are actually interesting, but I find Archie's odd quasi-nihilism unique and intriguing.

[Isobel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a huge Simon Stephens fan, but I feel that his plays can be somewhat hit and miss. On the Shore of the Wide World and Punk Rock were my favourites of this collection - both were raw and touching, really dynamic. Marine Parade was decent but not as gripping as those two, although I can imagine on stage it would be far more exciting than in text due to the musical elements. Harper Regan was my least favourite of the collection. I didn't really like the characters, they felt distant and lacking.

As for recommending this collection, I would say if you're interested in Stephens' work then give it a go. However, he seems very much grounded in British culture, and anyone with little knowledge of that may have to work slightly harder to understand the language. Especially with the Manchester-based dialect, I think part of the enjoyment certainly comes from living here and therefore being able to recognise part of my hometown in the language. Bear that in mind if you are thinking about reading these plays.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

On The Shore of the Wide World - 4 stars
Marine Parade - 3.5 stars
Harper Regan - 3.5 stars
Punk Rock - 4.5 stars