Broadway World - Somewhat Recommended
"...Punk Rock is the very definition of a slow burning candle. More aptly put, a slow burning candle whose wick winds up being connected to a thousand pounds of dynamite that blows your face off without any warning. This is all intentional. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the lackadaisical start is very much a brilliantly planned scheme by playwright Simon Stephens to lull the audience into a false sense of security before he goes from 0 to balls the wall insane in a mere 2.8 seconds."
LA Splash - Recommended
"...Skilled director Lisa James breathes life into these disparate teenagers, each with his own story and his own set of vulnerabilities – all thrown together in a high stress situation demanding that they define their futures. Through superb acting, each character gradually grows real and complete. Hormones become explosive as the tension builds, degree by degree. Audience Alert: PUNK ROCK runs for nearly two hours without an intermission. You are warned before the show that, if you leave the theater, you will not be permitted re-entry. No doubt this direction adds to the overall tension in the production."
Stage Scene LA - Highly Recommended
"...The Breakfast Club's all-American teen quintet may have found themselves holed up in the high school library like the seven English "sixth-formers" of Simon Stephens' Punk Rock, but the world inhabited by those 1980s John Hughes archetypes seems positively Disneyesque compared to the dystopia their contemporary UK counterparts call home in Stephens' riveting slice of middle-class private-school life, now being given an edge-of-your-seat Los Angeles Premiere by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble."
Will Call - Recommended
"...First off, please don't let the title deter you. This 70s-style music is only heard on the sound track between scenes. This show is not a nascent Broadway musical. It's a dark, stark look at contemporary youth in the U.K. and takes place in the library of a prep school (set by John Iacovelli). Not for the faint of heart, this ferocious piece of theatre is both frightening and enlightening, inspired by an event in America, which captured headlines around the world and is the dormant but ever present fear of every parent of a school-age child."
Total Theater - Highly Recommended
"...The actors - and director Lisa James - can't be praised enough for the contributions they have made to the success of this production. This is an ensemble, and a play, to remember."
Stage Raw - Not Recommended
"...If you're a patron of the arts, it's likely you've absorbed your fair share of teenage angst in storytelling. Since the rise of youth culture in the mid-twentieth century, it's become an inexhaustible well of inspiration, with results that vary from hackneyed to transcendent. Sadly, Punk Rock, directed by Lisa James at the Odyssey Theatre, edges to the more tired and trite end of the spectrum. Not to trivialize a scourge that is clearly still an epidemiological problem in America, but how many more stories can we bear to hear about angry young men and the violent outpourings of their rage?"
Theatre Notes - Highly Recommended
"...Odyssey Theatre Ensemble's production of Punk Rock is theatre at its best, funny and horrifying, touching and mesmerizing. Don't miss it. Travel if you have to. See it while you can."
On Stage and Screen - Somewhat Recommended
"...That being said, the performances from this young cast of mostly newcomers are very strong, anchored by Grant as William. Punk Rock makes for a very tense, visceral theater experience, although it may trend too far towards being tense and visceral for the sake of shock value."
Hollywood Revealed - Highly Recommended
"...Punk Rock is raw, graphic, erotic, and ultimately highly disturbing. It reminds me of that time you pick up a large stone to find hundreds of little bugs scurrying about underneath. The turmoil is just below the surface - till it isn't."
Santa Monica Observer - Highly Recommended
"...This play is superbly executed by a very excellent cast and it deserves your attention for it does touch upon areas that dearly do require our true and full attention. While the end portrayed is not all that common one such experience is all anyone needs to be forever removed from the equation."
Paris LA - Highly Recommended
"...A difficult play requires a diamond-hard cast, and the players here are, to the last, exceptional-in particular Zachary Grant, who brilliantly inhabits every step of his character's unwinding."
