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by Frank Wedekind, directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly

Equity Showcase Theatre, York Quay Studio Theatre, Toronto

November 25-December 6, 1999

“Abandoned Children”

Frank Wedekind’s tragedy “Spring Awakening” (written in 1891) is so far ahead  of its time that it seems more like a contemporary play written by, say, Edward Bond set in the 1890’s than a play actually written in that period.  It seems so modern because of its theme--teenage sexuality--and its thorough critique of adult-run institutions--schools, the church, even the family--which can deal with this awakening of sexual knowledge only by condemning and punishing it.  Wedekind, however, avoids the didacticism of someone like Bond by focussing on the characters themselves and by showing us a range of responses to this growing sexual awareness both by the teenagers and by the adults.  The play is a tragedy because it is the adults who have made the world the way it is and who wield the power to crush any threat to that stability such as the seeming chaos of teenage sexuality.

If the awakening of sexuality is confusing to the adults, it is even more confusing to the teenagers themselves, and an exploration of these various feelings takes up the first half of the play.  Ed Gass-Donnelly, the director and designer, has assembled an excellent cast of 18 actors, most of them young, for the 33 roles in the play.  Of the teenagers, Aaron Poole, in his first professional appearance, is very effective as Melchior, a boy whose learning about sex has undermined his idealism and faith and made him believe that people are motivated only by egotism. 

Philip Riccio as Moritz, Melchior’s best friend, is superb at portraying a boy crushed from outside by his parents’ expectations of him and eroded from within by his feeling of a desire.  Riccio easily negotiates the transitions in a crucial role that is by turns comic and tragic.  Dylan Trowbridge, in his one long monologue, was absolutely riveting as a boy  whose unfulfilled sexual desire has turned into an obsession with painted nude female figures close to becoming pathological.  Holly Lewis ably plays Wendla, a girl who begins to equate sexuality in women with suffering and is sadly proved  correct when she has sex with Melchior.  Melchior and Wendla are like Romeo and Juliet without the romantic love or like Faust and Gretchen without the idealism. 

Among the adults, Colleen Williams is all too believable as Wendla’s mother who never wants her daughter to grow up and can’t bring herself to tell her the facts of life.  And in the second act, Graham Harley steals the show as a sadistic schoolmaster who can barely conceal his glee at the prospect of expelling Melchior.

Ed Gass-Donnelly’s work with Daniel Brooks shows in his minimalist staging.  Virtually all the scenes on the bare stage are played on school desks and chairs or church pews, cleverly symbolizing the pervasive influence of the adult-run institutions so inimical to the children.  One of the challenges of the play is that it is written in two differing styles.  The first act, ending with the fatal steps taken by Moritz, Melchior and Wendla, is plays naturalistically.  In the second act where we see the consequences of these steps the play become more and more expressionistic as we enter into the nightmare that the three main children experience.  Gass-Donnelly expertly manages this transition.  My main complaint is that I think he could have gone farther in adapting Samuel Elliot’s sometimes awkward-sounding translation, although all the actors cope with it very well. 

“Spring Awakening”, like “A Doll’s House” or “Miss Julie”, is one of the key plays of the 19th century, and this production shows us why.  Circumstances may have changed in 100 years, but Wedekind’s portrayal of the confusion children feel in moving from innocence to experience and the threat adults feel at this awakening is still forceful and disturbing.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Aaron Poole.