Port

Description

I see you in the morning, on the first morning I stayed over at your house. Waking up. Watching you lying asleep next to me. You looked, you looked. It was like. I think about that more than you probably think I do. Stockport 1988-2002. Racheal Keats is growing up in a town she doesn't like with a family in tatters and a future she cannot picture. As those she loves begin to let her down or leave her behind, can Rachel find the strength to make her own way in the world? Port premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in November 2002. It was later staged in the Lyttelton at the National Theatre, opening in January 2013. Both productions were by Marianne Elliott.

Simon Stephens began his theatrical career in the literary department of the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers' Programme. His plays for theatre include Bluebird (Royal Court Theatre) Herons (Royal Court Theatre, 2001); Port (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2002); One Minute (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2003 and Bush Theatre, London, 2004); Christmas (Bush Theatre, 2004); Country Music (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 2004); On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange Theatre and National Theatre, London, 2005); Motortown (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2006); Pornography (Tricycle Theatre, London, 2009); Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008); Sea Wall (Bush Theatre, 2009); Heaven (Traverse Theatre, 2009); Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, London, 2009); The Trial of Ubu (Essen Schauspielhaus/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2010); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky (co-written with David Eldridge and Robert Holman; Lyric Hammersmith, London, 2010); Wastwater (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2011); Morning (Lyric Hammersmith, 2012); an adaptation of A Doll's House (Young Vic, 2012); an adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, 2012); Blindsided (Royal Exchange, 2014); and Birdland (Royal Court, 2014). His radio plays include Five Letters Home to Elizabeth (BBC Radio 4, 2001) and Digging (BBC Radio 4, 2003). Awards include the Pearson Award for Best New Play, 2001, for Port; Olivier Award for Best New Play for On the Shore of the Wide World, 2005; and for Motortown German critics in Theater Heute's annual poll voted him Best Foreign Playwright, 2007. His adaptation of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play.

I directed his play Port at the Exchange, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever done. His writing is so detailed, so psychologically rich, so daring in terms of his emotion. He's not very English in that way. * Marianne Elliot, director * Stephens's tender, turbulent play follows the key stages of Rachel's life as she loses her adored grandfather, finds the love of her life, then gets married to someone else ... the Stockport-born Stephens presents the flip side of the rave culture ... Stephens has mapped the course of her life in seven succinct scenes and brought me to the brink of tears in six of them -- Alfred Hickling * Guardian * The drama undoubtedly grips. As he showed in his equally harrowing Royal Court play Herons, Stephens is superb at capturing the cruelties of childhood and adolescence. But he is also blessed with compassion and a gift for dark humour ... The insecurities of childhood, tense family relationships, and the embarrassment, wonder and disappointment of young love are all caught with rare precision ... though the play is often deeply depressing, there is no mistaking its emotional truth or its moving glimmer of hope at the end. -- Charles Spencer * Telegraph * A play that lifts the spirits and leaves you full of hope ... Stephen's rich portrait of the female capacity for endurance. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * Stephens paints a world that is as tender as it is tough ... for all its insight into childhood dreams and adult reality, this is no oh-woe-is-me moan ... Simon Stephens puts social realism into poetic flight through the depth of his empathy and the skill of his construction. He's one of our most prolific writers. Port reminds us that, on song, he's one of our best. -- Dominic Maxwell * The Times * Bleakly brilliant... as unbearably sad as it is beautiful -- Unknown * Sunday Express * Sometimes lyrical, Stephens' language never loses its dark realism ... giving [Rachael] and other characters idiosyncratic wit and depth. -- Emily Jupp * Independent * Simon Stephens - a dramatist who can put a wide vision into close focus... a sense of personal history lived from within ... Stephens creates vital, slippery, raw speech for his heroine ... Other dialogue has a deadpan, dead accurate understatement ... What could have been sentimental is stirring. -- Susannah Clapp * Observer * [A] slice of seedy social realism, leavened by humour and empathy for its resilient central character. -- Maxie Szalwinska * The Sunday Times *