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