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EgoPo's 'Spring Awakening' (first review)
Steve Cohen
Adolescent angst, a century ago
STEVE COHEN
Frank Wedekind’s 1891 drama Spring Awakening was too shocking to be accepted in his own time. It is disturbing enough in ours.
The subject is puberty and the blossoming of sexual and intellectual curiosity among 14-year-olds. The children anguish about sex, mortality and morality while studying to pass their school exams— no different from kids today.
Spring Awakening wasn’t performed until Wedekind started his own repertory company in 1906. Its English-language debut in 1917 almost didn’t take place because the New York City Commissioner of Licenses claimed it was pornographic. A court allowed the production, but it closed after only one performance. Even in modern times it has rarely been produced.
All the adults– parents, educators, the minister and the doctor– are portrayed as narrow-minded, repressive, sometimes sadistic. Religious authority, state authority and medical authority are presented as destructive forces. Is this the playwright’s view of society, or is it simply the way adolescents see adults? Both, I would say. Wedekind wrote the play from a child’s point of view, and he succeeded in maintaining that perspective throughout. So director Lane Savadove’s choice to present all of the adults wearing grotesque masks is valid.
Experimenting with everything…. but drugs
The kids in Spring Awakening, understandably, experiment with masturbation, masochism, homosexuality, rape and thoughts of suicide. (In Germany in the 1890s, suicide was a fashionable escape; drug use apparently was not so prevalent.) Told that their ideas are evil, sympathetic kids end up expelled from school, pregnant or dead. Even in death, one boy is denounced as immoral and wicked.
Although the setting is a faraway country in a distant time, this play hits home. Wedekind’s German parents were enamored of America and named their son Benjamin Franklin Wedekind; intuitively, he wrote a play that resonates here. Savadove says his company’s mission is to revisit classic plays and recapture the authors’ intentions. Accordingly, the setting is still Germany circa 1891.
(Savadove founded EgoPo Productions in San Francisco in 1991 and later moved it to New Orleans. Its New Orleans theater, props and costumes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina while the troupe was visiting Philadelphia for an appearance as part of the Fringe Festival. Now the company has permanently relocated to Philly.)
The New York version
In contrast, a musical now in Manhattan, Spring Awakening, straddles both worlds. Starting in its original time, the characters pull microphones from their costumes and sing rock music. Its story is cut considerably. EgoPo’s provocative production runs more than three hours and holds our attention. Only one scene runs on too long, when hypocritical school administrators meet to expel a student because he wrote an explanation of reproduction and handed it to another student.
(Full disclosure: I alleviated the boredom of my fifth grade class by hand-lettering a dictionary of dirty words. When I circulated it among my classmates I got called on the carpet by the administration.)
Savadove is known for using physicality to bring plays to life. In this production rapid and erratic movements also convey the youth of the characters. While there’s some violence, it is not as extreme as in EgoPo’s The Maids, seen last year. Nor is there any raw language as in the New York musical Spring Awakening. We see masturbation and a rape but there’s no nudity, and nothing seems to be done for shock effect.
The first act is played upon a bed of spring flowers, a wonderful visual effect. The last scene is in an eerie and haunting graveyard. I’m hard-pressed trying to decide which makes the most lasting impression. Lighting and sound effects are excellent, as is the young cast that trained for many weeks in Savadove’s techniques. Robert DaPonte as Melchior, Doug Greene as Moritz and Megan McDermott as Wendla particularly stand out.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
STEVE COHEN
Frank Wedekind’s 1891 drama Spring Awakening was too shocking to be accepted in his own time. It is disturbing enough in ours.
The subject is puberty and the blossoming of sexual and intellectual curiosity among 14-year-olds. The children anguish about sex, mortality and morality while studying to pass their school exams— no different from kids today.
Spring Awakening wasn’t performed until Wedekind started his own repertory company in 1906. Its English-language debut in 1917 almost didn’t take place because the New York City Commissioner of Licenses claimed it was pornographic. A court allowed the production, but it closed after only one performance. Even in modern times it has rarely been produced.
All the adults– parents, educators, the minister and the doctor– are portrayed as narrow-minded, repressive, sometimes sadistic. Religious authority, state authority and medical authority are presented as destructive forces. Is this the playwright’s view of society, or is it simply the way adolescents see adults? Both, I would say. Wedekind wrote the play from a child’s point of view, and he succeeded in maintaining that perspective throughout. So director Lane Savadove’s choice to present all of the adults wearing grotesque masks is valid.
Experimenting with everything…. but drugs
The kids in Spring Awakening, understandably, experiment with masturbation, masochism, homosexuality, rape and thoughts of suicide. (In Germany in the 1890s, suicide was a fashionable escape; drug use apparently was not so prevalent.) Told that their ideas are evil, sympathetic kids end up expelled from school, pregnant or dead. Even in death, one boy is denounced as immoral and wicked.
Although the setting is a faraway country in a distant time, this play hits home. Wedekind’s German parents were enamored of America and named their son Benjamin Franklin Wedekind; intuitively, he wrote a play that resonates here. Savadove says his company’s mission is to revisit classic plays and recapture the authors’ intentions. Accordingly, the setting is still Germany circa 1891.
(Savadove founded EgoPo Productions in San Francisco in 1991 and later moved it to New Orleans. Its New Orleans theater, props and costumes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina while the troupe was visiting Philadelphia for an appearance as part of the Fringe Festival. Now the company has permanently relocated to Philly.)
The New York version
In contrast, a musical now in Manhattan, Spring Awakening, straddles both worlds. Starting in its original time, the characters pull microphones from their costumes and sing rock music. Its story is cut considerably. EgoPo’s provocative production runs more than three hours and holds our attention. Only one scene runs on too long, when hypocritical school administrators meet to expel a student because he wrote an explanation of reproduction and handed it to another student.
(Full disclosure: I alleviated the boredom of my fifth grade class by hand-lettering a dictionary of dirty words. When I circulated it among my classmates I got called on the carpet by the administration.)
Savadove is known for using physicality to bring plays to life. In this production rapid and erratic movements also convey the youth of the characters. While there’s some violence, it is not as extreme as in EgoPo’s The Maids, seen last year. Nor is there any raw language as in the New York musical Spring Awakening. We see masturbation and a rape but there’s no nudity, and nothing seems to be done for shock effect.
The first act is played upon a bed of spring flowers, a wonderful visual effect. The last scene is in an eerie and haunting graveyard. I’m hard-pressed trying to decide which makes the most lasting impression. Lighting and sound effects are excellent, as is the young cast that trained for many weeks in Savadove’s techniques. Robert DaPonte as Melchior, Doug Greene as Moritz and Megan McDermott as Wendla particularly stand out.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
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