Theatre review: Spring Awakening, Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh

MORE than 120 years after it was written, it’s still hard not to marvel at the sheer, raw courage of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring Awakening, and at its continuing power to disarm and upset audiences, even at the Brunton Theatre on a quiet Friday night.

Spring Awakening

Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh

***

Some left at the interval, but most stayed until the end; for if there’s one thing that cannot be said about this play, it’s that its study of sexual confusion, hypocrisy and repression among a group of German teenagers at the end of the 19th century no longer has relevance for young people now.

Every one of the experiences Wedekind explores – from teenage pregnancy and illegal abortion to exam pressure, teenage suicide and suppressed homosexual love – still features in the lives of young people, either here in Britain, or in places not far away; and if Wedekind, who was born in 1864, was a very early harbinger of the sexual revolution that swept the world a century later, the response to his frank portrayal of teenage sexuality suggests that revolution is still far from complete.

Max Lewendel’s slow-moving, two-and-three-quarter-hour take on Wedekind’s text – for an Icarus Theatre touring production which appears in Kirkcaldy tonight – doesn’t quite succeed in capturing the wit, pace and almost filmic surrealism of Wedekind’s text; and some of the young actors seem simply overwhelmed.

There’s a beautiful central performance from Gabrielle Dempsey, though, as passionate heroine Wendla Bergman; and if the pace sometimes flags, and the theatrical texture becomes blurred, this careful and heartfelt production still reminds us of Wedekind’s extraordinary power to astonish.

Joyce McMillan