Purists would have it that punk rock was but a brief explosion in first New York then London, and was all but spent by the end of 1977. Irish photographer Niall O'Brien, however, was born in 1979 and has no truck with purism. Instead, taking the role of anthropologist for his exhibition Good Rats, he has befriended and spent time with groups of young punks, from skaters in Kingston-upon-Thames to homeless teens in Berlin and Tel Aviv, and documented the noise, chaos and sense of belonging that comes with the subculture more than three decades on from its inception. Click on the images below Read more ...

The death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994 has provided a densely populated field of daydreams for conspiracy theorists, several of whom hotly insist that the troubled avatar of Grunge was murdered. Conversely, he may be playing in a ZZ Top covers band in Peru with Elvis and Jim Morrison. Whatever, playwright Roy Smiles has pursued a more original angle.Picking up on a rumour that there had been somebody with Cobain on the night of his suicide, Smiles exploits Cobain's well-documented fascination with deceased Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, and wonders aloud what would have happened if the Read more ...

Is youth wasted on the young? Well, precious few grown-ups who watch Simon Stephens's new drama, Punk Rock, will develop a sudden urge to be a teenager again: his portrait of a group of middle-class youngsters is every parent's nightmare. They are either foul-mouthed and aggressive bullies, or deeply troubled neurotics - and the gradual escalation of their conflicts ends in the kind of mindless violence that stays on the front pages for days.Set in a Stockport grammar school, on the eve of A-level exams, the play starts off with the tender encounter between two 17-year-olds, local fantasist Read more ...