Five years after the undeservedly brief
West End run of Duncan Sheik’s musical version comes the most thrilling
adaptation of
Spring Awakening
I have ever seen, with play and characters alike full of sound and
fury, not least fury that they signify nothing.
Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play indicts the sexual repression of German
culture at the time, with ignorance leading to excessive fantasies and
acts of self-discovery among teenagers. The brilliance of Anya Reiss’s
contemporary update lies partly in its recognition that ignorance need
not stem from an absence of information. These teens Google, Skype,
watch online porn and so forth, and as the old joke has it are far
better informed but none the wiser. For none of this instruction comes
from the responsible adults, their parents and teachers. It is another
stroke of genius to have the youths don grown-up clothing to play these
figures: they criticise each other’s performances, but also come
head-on against the same impulses to avoid or sidestep matters.
This, too, is understandable: homosexuality, sado-masochism, rape,
abortion and suicide amongst a group of 14-year-olds would no doubt be
unpalatably strong fare even for many adults in 21st-century Britain,
never mind the 19th-century Germany in which the play premièred. And
yet our deepest instincts remain with the youngsters facing this
conspiracy of condescension, and rightly so. Reiss’s treatment of the
suicide-aftermath confrontation with a pair of teachers took me
agonisingly back to a similar moment in my own adolescence.
Ben Kidd’s touring production (currently running at co-producer the
Nuffield in Southampton) brims with the Headlong company’s trademark
chutzpah as the cast of eight endlessly reshape, and reshape themselves
through, Colin Richmond’s playground setting. The central trio of Aoife
Duffin (Wendla, under-informed about sex, abortion), Bradley Hall
(Moritz, academic and peer pressure, suicide) and Oliver Johnstone
(Melchior, intelligence but no attachment, rape) are only first among
equals in the company. (Roger Allam also makes an audio-only appearance
as a libidinous art-gallery guide recording.) The ending, with its
immense store of youthful fire in search of a direction and finding
only the admission that there is none, is strongly reminiscent of the
same moment in some of Simon Stephens’ teen dramas. Reiss, only a
couple of years out of her own teens, articulates it all with insight
to match her empathy.
Written for the Financial
Times.