Port

A richly colourful portrait of a town with the everyday writ large, Simon Stephens’ Port is a celebration of the human spirit as Ra-chel, through sheer courage and despite an economic and political climate that pushes her into the very margins, looks to the future and opts for love and life and for something better.

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. It’s midnight. Rachel, eleven, and Billy, six, wait in the car in agitated excitement. Their mother is at her wits’ end with all their chatter and fighting and dreams of Disneyland. She is about to leave them for good. Their father, drunk in the flat above, has locked the door. It’s a pivotal moment, the beginning of a thir-teen-year odyssey for two kids, largely abandoned and growing up in the deprived suburban shadows of Manchester, a city that felt itself to be the most exciting in the world.

He don’t do drugs. Nowt like that. He just. He really tries. I hope… This is a very big chance for him. I hope he doesn’t fuck things up this time. I hope he’ll be alright.