Spring Awakening

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Lyric musical will give you a spring in your step

As is usual with Hammersmith Lyric productions, Spring Awakening is not a production for the faint-hearted.

Featuring teenage sex, abortion, homosexuality, sadomasochism, swear-words and suicide, if you're planning on attending this multi-Tony award-winning musical, recently transferred from Broadway to Hammersmith, make sure you don't shock easily.

Spring Awakening is based on the first dramatic work of the bohemian, songwriter and actor Frank Wedekind. His play, Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening), was instantly banned when it opened in 1891.

Steven Sater, Michael Mayer and Duncan Sheik's adaptation does not shy away from the controversial themes, and features fresh-faced young performers dressed in German 19th Century clothes, singing rock songs into microphones about love, sex and growing up, with a liberal application of four-letter words.

The musical fizzles with energy and takes on an almost cartoonish, gothic quality, as the schoolboys and schoolgirls find their hair teased into ridiculous shapes.

All of the adult characters are played by the same actors, which gives the ‘grown-up’ world a sinister feel, as good and bad characters become indistinguishable – an unheeding, uncomprehending mass.

Anuerin Barnard is compelling as the intellectual atheist Melchoir, who pursues the innocent Wendla, so ignorant of the facts of life that she is unaware that she becomes pregnant.

Wendla is acted brilliantly by Charlotte Wakefield, who reminded me of the actress Emma Watson.

Anyone who can remember their teenage years will be familiar with the songs' sentiments, expressing anger at adult hypocrisy, fascination with all things sexual and fear about exams and the future.

The young British cast who have replaced their New York counterpoints to come to the Lyric perform well, and have fantastic voices.

By turns sentimental, maudlin, angry, tragic and energetic, this production had a standing ovation from the audience at the performance I attended last week.

 

February 11, 2008