Port [Paperback]

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 1988-2002. Racheal Keats is growing up in a town she doesn't like with a family in tatters and a future she cannot picture. As those she loves begin to let her down or leave her behind, can Rachel find the strength to make her own way in the world?

Portpremiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in November 2002. It was later staged in the Lyttelton at the National Theatre, opening in January 2013. Both productions were by Marianne Elliott.

I directed his play Port at the Exchange, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever done. His writing is so detailed, so psychologically rich, so daring in terms of his emotion. He's not very English in that way. Marianne Elliot, director

Stephens's tender, turbulent play follows the key stages of Rachel's life as she loses her adored grandfather, finds the love of her life, then gets married to someone else ... the Stockport-born Stephens presents the flip side of the rave culture ... Stephens has mapped the course of her life in seven succinct scenes and brought me to the brink of tears in six of them Alfred Hickling,Guardian

The drama undoubtedly grips. As he showed in his equally harrowing Royal Court playHerons, Stephens is superb at capturing the cruelties of childhood and adolescence. But he is also blessed with compassion and a gift for dark humour ... The insecurities of childhood, tense family relationships, and the embl#$