The Funfair - (Modern Plays) by Simon Stephens (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

I kept telling myself I wanted something more out of my life, something brighter. I had all these ideas in my head. Thing is, I had to go down so low just to try to lift my life up a little bit higher.

Simon Stephens's exciting new adaptation of the twentieth-century classic Kasimir and Karoline is a dark, political and hilarious play that sets two young lovers in the throes of a break-up against the hypnotic whirl and bright lights of a funfair.

The Funfair takes us on a ride through the loops, dips and highs of one night at a fairground, exploring a crisis of capitalism set to the soundtrack of a rock and roll love song.

The play received its world premiere at Manchester's Home Theatre on 14 May 2015 and was the theatre's first-ever production.

Review Quotes

"Its gaudy despair . . . is true, disturbing and wide-reaching" --Guardian

"At every turn, The Funfair subverts your liberal prejudices" --Whatsonstage

"Stephens' reworking is local and immediate. It translates the story of romantic disintegration and far-right politics at the 1929 Munich Oktoberfest into a violent, hedonistic night on the lash at a seedy Mancunian fairground today. . . . it seethes with rage at the obscene inequalities of wealth and power in our society and how they drive the dispossessed to turn on one another." --The Times

"with hints of an expressionist Woyzeck, the melancholy of a Chekhov play and some of the political clout of Edward Bond's Saved. . . . The era is both now and then." --Guardian

"Simon Stephens's angry version of Odon von Horvath's 1932 Kasimir and Karoline. . . . Stephens sees utter modernity in his tale of lovers breaking up as poverty and desperation render the world around them hostile. . . . a piece of dark, glittering fragments. . . . it's gaudy despair . . . is true, disturbing and wide-reaching." --Observer

"Stephens' script is excellent, peppered with bursting one-liners. And the nightmarish atmosphere of the fair, a metaphor for a society sick at its core, is powerfully evoked. Politically engaged and artistically bold - as reliant on surreal imagery as on dialogue" --Financial Times

"Simon Stephens's latest work is an unflinching, highly political portrait of life at the bottom of the heap." --Mail on Sunday

About the Author