Spring Thaw

Spring Awakening at MTC Warehouse Theatre, Thursday, November 24, 2011

Reviewed by Stephanie Adamov

Angst. Agony. Answers. The characters in Winnipeg’s Studio Theatre’s performance of Spring Awakening search to break the delusions promoted by their parents, instructors and clergy. Director Kayla Gordon has facilitated the blossoming of each of the characters. Through rehearsal exercises and examination of the original material, she challenged the actors to explore the issues and relationships addressed through script and song.

Coming into the theatre I had not had any exposure to this piece as a musical, nor did I have any aversion to the subject or content matter. However, my personal approach to theatre involves experiencing it as a live entity, not gleaned through technology such as YouTube, where parts of the show are available after it won multiple Tony Awards and other acclaim on Broadway and also in London.

My only previous experience of the musical came from a work-in-progress production premiering at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival by the Academy of Broadcasting Corporation this past summer. Pat St. Germain from the Winnipeg Free Press described the experience of the performance accurately when he wrote “lukewarm… overall, a long sit.”

Therefore I hoped that this performance would change my preconceived notions. How could the originally banned script, written by Frank Wedekind in 1892, still be valuable to a 2011 audience? Duncan Sheik, who wrote the music, and Steven Sater, who wrote the book and lyrics, are faced with this question: what is the benefit of using rock music to depict fin de siècle adolescent angst? Are we, in 2011, better equipped to deal with the issues at stake? Or, in over a century… have things changed very much at all?

Sex. Suicide. Masturbation. Abortion. Parental abuse. Homosexuality. Spring Awakening is forthright in exploring these themes. It challenges each audience member to awaken their mind and experience the story of these students. Through script, song and dance the show demonstrates that these topics are still relevant to an era of overexposure to sexual content, violence and nudity. We are on the opposite side of the exposure spectrum but the above topics are still issues teens face during their coming of age.

The episodic narrative tracks the maturing process of these German teens. Through their school, recreation and within their home life, the play shows how institutions and power figures attempt to control the teens’ thoughts and actions. By attempting to censor information and the emergence of desire, the children of these institutions and authority figures suffer permanently.

Wendla, played by the innocent-looking Samantha Hill, becomes pregnant. Her mother refuses to tell her the truth about how babies are made in the opening scene of the play. While strictly enforcing the notion that sexual activity can only be post-marital, her mother is more than willing to send her to the doctor for an experimental abortion, causing her death by ‘anemia,’ and all to avoid public humiliation.

Colin Peterson is cast as the distracted, pubescent boy Moritz, whose studies suffer due to his inability to control his sexual feelings. His father shames and dishonours him when he fails academically. When he is unable to keep up his marks, he resorts to suicide.

Parental abuse, even in the 1890s, was meeting with public disapproval. Even so, Connie Manfredi plays Martha, who bears visible bruises and represses tears and screams as her father beats her, and her mother turns a blind eye.

These authority figures are played by actors Arne MacPherson and Miriam Bernstein. Overbearing and over-controlling, they play the adult male and female in different aspects. Comedically, militantly and naively, they believe themselves to be in control, but one student strives to break the status quo.

Jeremy Walmsley portrays the intelligent and incredibly rebellious Melchior, who yearns for the truth. In the song “All is Known” he challenges the authority figures in his life singing, “Thought is suspect, and money is their idol. Nothing is okay unless it’s scripted in their Bible.” He searches to learn about sexuality and the life of the passions that adults have withheld from him. Through essays and diagrams, he shows his friend Moritz erotic images to educate him when teachers fail to address these taboo subjects.

The manufactured thrust stage is now traditional for this musical, uniquely allowing a select few audience members to experience the show onstage. Actors of the eighteen-member ensemble at different times will sit among the spectators on stage. Briefly, some of these performers are seen in modern attire and almost spastically jump up in song and dance during such pieces as “The Bitch of Living” and “Touch Me.”

Having the characters in modern attire made me reflect that these issues of sexuality are still present today. Teens giggle as the nurse slips the condom on the banana, and some parents and school boards argue that promoting safe sex and handing out condoms immediately results in promiscuity, pregnancy and STIs. These issues, many decades after this play was originally banned, are still a matter of controversy and are most certainly still relevant.

The jarring and spastic choreography inspired by the original Broadway production and taught to the ensemble here by Brenda Gorlick highlights this angst and sexual frustration. Boys jump on chairs, girls stomp the ground and toss their hair in every direction and make fluid hand gestures, representing the characters’ secret passions and desires.

Musicians orchestrated on stage by Andrew St. Hilaire filled the theatre with the exhilarating melodies in songs such as “Totally Fucked” and “The Song of Purple Summer.” Using rock music this way to allow the teens to share their inner thoughts likely helped a perhaps nontraditional theatre audience to relate to the material. Effectively, when the students began to sing songs communicating their candid thoughts, the actors would grab handheld microphones hidden within their costumes.

Somewhat distracting for me was having the entire musical ensemble on stage but I recognize that given the performance space, it was the only available real estate.

Unfortunately, technical issues with the microphones were evident throughout the performance. Inability to hear the lyrics took away from my experience of the show, and thus resulted in me having to look up the words. Later performances may well resolve these issues but they just expose how interdependent each element of a production is.

Music and sound were used remarkably well. Notably, during the scene where Moritz puts the gun in his mouth as his last act after he sings, “Don’t Do Sadness/Blue Wind,” the musicians turned off the lamps that illuminate their sheet music. Thus, the production ends in an effective black out. Worth mentioning as well is that Moritz’s gun goes off silently. There is great build up to his suicide, but the silence accompanied by the blackout promotes the theme: silence kills. Avoidance and denial prove to detrimentally and permanently affect these teens.

The brisk and highly rehearsed scene changes during this piece propelled the idea of power growing from the repressed youth. The climax of the song “Totally Fucked” allowed each member of the ensemble to let their inhibitions loose as they ran, jumped, stomped about the stage in utter rebellion against the oppressive societal forces.

Even as the desperate and disheveled Melchior approaches the stage, there’s a presence of hope. He believes that he was the catalyst and responsible for the death of his best friend Moritz and Wendla, his lover. He is determined that like Moritz, he will commit suicide as he kneels at Wendla’s grave. But during “The Song of Purple Summer” he is joined in strength and solidarity by the ensemble.

Though the winter may be harsh, and seeming to have no end, spring will always follow these barren days. We must therefore wait, even in the harshest of times and darkest of nights, knowing that we will awaken to the dawn of spring.

---

Spring Awakening at the MTC Tom Hendry Theatre (Warehouse), 140 Rupert, Winnipeg, show times: Nov 24-26, 8 pm • Nov 27, 2 pm, 7 pm • Nov 29-Dec 3, 8 pm • Dec 4, 2 pm, 7 pm