Simon Stephens Plays 5: Wastwater; Birdland; Blindsided; Song From Far Away; Heisenberg

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 cliches until they fall apart, before reassembling them into solid but transformed shapes, reminding us why such cliches have become enduring elements of our collective mythology. (Ben Brantley, New York Times)