Stephens writes dramas set in uncaring, uncompromising worlds, whose
characters speak in a language at once naturalistic and yet artificially
pared-down and whose uncertain attempts to assert their own identities
sometimes lead to gratuitous and brutal acts of violence. - Financial
Times
A fifth collection of plays by one of Britain's most prolific
contemporary playwrights, Simon Stephens, charting his work from
2011-2016, ranging from London's Royal Court Theatre, Manchester's Royal
Exchange and Broadway.
Wastwater (2011) Metaphoric, allusive, and thoroughly disturbing in
its evocation of suspicion and uncertainty, Wastwater is a
thought-provoking play whose quiet intensity stays with you for days -
its effect is like that of a ugly stone dropped into a pool, which
results in constant ripples of dirty water lapping at your subconscious
(Aleks Sierz)
Birdland (2014) Mega-fame and limitless cash can turn a man into a
monster, and Simon Stephens's new play excellently evokes its hero's
spiritually shrunken world (Michael Billington, Guardian)
Blindsided (2014) "the dialogue has a rare quality of
moment-by-moment intensity (Telegraph)
Song From Far Away (2015) a meditative monologue - a searching
study of impotently self-aware emotional insufficiency (Independent)
Heisenberg (2016) Mr. Stephens ... is an uncannily subtle dramatist
who never wears his depths on the surface ... he probes clichés until
they fall apart, before reassembling them into solid but transformed
shapes, reminding us why such clichés have become enduring elements of
our collective mythology. (Ben Brantley, New York Times)
