Punk Rock

No other pop form captures teenage nihilism quite as effectively as punk does. It’s this quality, driven to its most terrifying extreme, that lifts Simon Stephens’s 2009 play above the standard high-school-is-hell narrative. Stephens pushes the story in an intriguing direction; the kids on the bottom of the totem pole don’t thirst for revenge or redemption but annihilation. As played by the alternately vulnerable and chilling Joey deBettencourt, school shooter William combines in one volatile package both Holden Caulfield and all the confused, gun-toting, angry young men who’ve cited Holden Caulfield as an influence.