SPRING AWAKENING. To 22 July.
London
SPRING AWAKENING
by Frank Wedekind translated by Edward Bond
Union Theatre 204 Union Street SE1 OLX To 22 July 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7261 9876
www.uniontheatre.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July
Fierce drama in a gripping production.
With biting irony, Wedekind dedicated his 1891 drama to teachers and parents. They are the oppressive enemies to adolescent sexual confusion. Aoife Smyth clearly understands Wedekind’s point and dramatic style, and the Union’s potential as a performing space, directing a scalding production of Edward Bond’s terse translation.
On a long, narrow stage-strip, under Steve Miler’s often subdued lighting, the young people play in rare moments of joy and freedom; a girl rides a swing with innocent sexuality, there’s a fast, physical tag-game; a free artistic community loll at the theatre’s distant-seeming end as two young men discover their mutual desire.
But these moments are outnumbered by the oppressive results of respectable adult society. Teachers are contemptible, with their ridiculous names. Supposed educators, they bear down on young men with traditional learning while ignoring their students as people. Smyth’s production takes the physical satire too far; these buffoons, comatose and pompous, are made less dangerous. David Hollett’s headteacher, though, is aptly judgmental.
Parents are as destructive, but through ignorance rather than institutional callousness. And it’s the brightest and best, the most sensitive and giving young people, who are most likely to be destroyed. Smyth’s production has fine performances from Ryan Gage as the intelligent Melchior and Jeremy Joyce as Moritz, the academic stumbler who tries desperately to live up to parental expectations; a loyalty his father doesn’t return.
Joyce gives Moritz a happy disposition and earnest determination to reach standards he’ll never attain, while Gage’s Melchior faces the world with a probing intelligence that meets rebuffs at school and which brings trouble through sexual ignorance.
Balancing these are the happy-go-lucky girls, like Nina Fry’s rebellious Martha or Kate Colgrave Pope’s free-spirited Ilse (unsurprisingly encountered in the forest). It’s the sensitive, bourgeois Wendla who faces the worst from the girls; Kerry Furness shows her happy sensitivity and later puzzlement, while Caroline Devlin as her mother, shows the best-willed intentions coming unstuck at sexual embarrassment.
This gripping production reaches its finest moment in Wedekind’s mystic conclusion, where the dead tempt the living in a cold, eerie graveyard, and salvation comes masked in mystery.
Wendla: Kerry Fuentes
Frau Bergmann: Caroline Devlin
Melchior: Ryan Gage
Otto/Fastcrawler/Friend Zieg: Cameron Slater
Moritz: Jeremy Joyce
Robert/Apelard/Dr Procrustes: Aidan Synnott
Ernst/Gutgrinder: Christos Lawton
Martha: Nina Fry
Thea/Ina: Orna Salinger
Hanschen/Locksmith/Thickstick: Adam Howden
Lammermier/Flyswatter/Dieter: Jay Carter
Frau Gabor: Jan Shepherd
Ilse/Headless Queen: Kate Colgrave Pope
Sunstroke/Rupert: David Hollett
Tonguetwister/Rev Baldbelly/Reinhold:Roy Khalil
Herr Stiefel/Gaston/Dr Lemonade: James Folan
Herr Gabor/Masked Man: James Kemp
Director: Aoife Smyth
Designer: Jenny Dawes
Lighting: Steve Miller
Assistant director: Giles Faulkner
2006-07-17 15:57:00