Headlong's Spring Awakening, UK tour

By Sophia Longhi

The poster image for Anya Reiss's modernised Spring Awakening is unsettling. A girl is suspended horizontally in the air above the play's title with closed eyes and an expression of peaceful surrender. When you turn your head to see her in an upright vertical position, you see that she is floating, as if being coaxed upwards by an invisible force. Her chest and pelvis stick out, perhaps hinting at a sexual awakening and her chin is raised, as if she could be rising for a kiss. Then you realise that, rather than rising up, she could be hanging down from her neck. It is an image of surrender - and it would seem that a darker force has won.

A picture paints a thousand words, and this is a theme that is drawn upon in this up-to-date version of Frank Wedekind's Edwardian play. We see how images, from the internet and on mobile devices, have taken the place of words, of facts, of conversations - resulting in tragic consequences. These consequences, due to the lack of information provided to children about sex and other adolescent issues, were real when the play was written somewhere between the autumn of 1890 and the spring of 1891, and they are hauntingly real today, some 120 years after. Wedekind subtitled the play, A Children's Tragedy, and surely this must be the true tragedy - the fact that Spring Awakening still resonates so strongly, disturbingly so, with today's audience and, though we are saturated with information about everything, an openness between adults and children is still something we have failed to achieve.

Reiss has masterfully reworked Spring Awakening to bring it to a 2014 setting, exposing its relevance to today's teenagers. Suicide, rape, teenage pregnancy, abortion, homosexuality and masturbation were all themes present in Wedekind's play, leading it to cause public outrage, and it wasn't until 1974 that the play received its first uncut production. With more freedom of information and relaxed censorship laws, we are now harder to shock in many ways, but the issues remain and are more prevalent than ever. Whereas in the original stageplay, Melchior writes Moritz an essay, graphically detailing the facts of intercourse, the 2014 Melchior sends him sexual images to his email account and shows him pornographic clips on his phone. The pressure that Wedekind's Moritz feels about his grades at school can undoubtedly be related to by students nowadays and, tragically, teenage suicide (so commonplace in 19th century Germany that the term 'schulerselbstmorde', meaning student suicide, was coined) is something that is reported almost daily in today's media.

The disturbing outcome of the Information Age, which Reiss places emphasis on, is the desensitisation of our teenagers. Suicides are filmed and uploaded to YouTube and violent pornography is casually viewed in the playground. Without factual information from adults, the sad conclusion is that it has all become normalised and children are left to experiment between themselves. Wendla begs her mother to tell her the truth about how babies are made, as she did in 1890 and as she does in Reiss's version today, and her mother, in a move that has remained unchanged from the original version, shies away from the conversation and concludes that a man and a woman can only make a baby if they love each other and if they don't, it is not real. The disastrous effect of withholding the truth is played out devastatingly between Wendla and Melchior and although, as previously mentioned, not much these days is truly shocking, the audience are left silenced and unnerved.

In this modernised take, Reiss has successfully created the illusion of an adult-free world. In the cast of young adults, they take it in turns to double-up as the grown-ups in the play with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of performance. Life centres around the park and Colin Richmond's design places it as the permanent feature on stage - the place where secrets and sexual encounters are shared, all the while sitting on swings too big for them. The addition of video projection on the backdrop and a youthful-rebellion soundtrack immerses the audience into the 2014 world of teendom, which we are invited to view at a distance as voyeurs rather than participants.

With updated language, Reiss has exposed Wedekind's characters as people we can all relate to and have met in our own teen years - we all knew a precocious Thea, an innocent Martha and a disillusioned Melchior - and the parts are played by the superb cast with the energy and authenticity demanded. Under the excellent and innovative direction of Ben Kidd, all of the actors deliver, and the lead characters do not disappoint - Aoife Duffin as Wendla, is fearless in spite of her character's touching naivety, the roguish Oliver Johnstone is perfectly cast as the curious and brooding Melchior and Moritz is played sensitively, humourously and heartbreakingly by Bradley Hall. It must be said that Daisy Whalley as Ilse is particularly memorable. Although a subsidiary part, Whalley's haunting depiction of runaway Ilse is transfixing, and her erratic video chat with Moritz displays her talent on film as well as on stage.

Like teendom, the play flits between lightheartedness and intensity and, despite being hard-hitting, Wedekind did intend for Spring Awakening to be funny, which Reiss has achieved. The play was partly autobiographical for Wedekind and one could argue that it is for all of us, after all every one of us experiences being a teenager and the questions, curiosities and feelings the characters pose can't help but ring true. Perhaps that is why this play still has and always will have such an effect - we are, have been and will be the Melchiors, the Wendlas and the Moritzs and on our ascent to adulthood, we walk the line precariously between triumph and tragedy without realising it until much later. Failure to equip children with the knowledge so desperately sought after and needed lies with adults and Spring Awakening once again addresses this danger for a new generation of teenagers and parents. In spite of the development of our sexualised society, the gulf of communication between children and parents continues to gape mockingly, a sobering reality that this updated version of Spring Awakening brings to light. A co-production by Headlong, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Nuffield, Anya Reiss's Spring Awakening is a bold and triumphant offering, in which none of Wedekind's intended radicalism and poignancy is lost.

Book tickets here

#reviews