Written over a century ago, Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening remains timeless in its exploration of adolescent confusion. Last weekend, UB's Theatre Department put on the play in the CFA Black Box Theatre, offering up a faithful adaptation that left some awakened and some, well, confused.
First-produced in 1906 (after being written in 1891), Wedekind's two-act play spent the better part of the twentieth century under constant scrutiny due to its controversial examination of budding sexuality and the pressures of controlling authority.
Revolving around several adolescent students, the actors did not shy away from the risqu?(c) material, instead leaping into their roles, embracing the awkwardness of each scene with stark professionalism.
Brittany Sellers, Jordan Levin, and Greg Przybylak played the three central characters, Wendla Bergmann, Moritz Steifel, and Melchior Gabor respectively.
Young Moritz is rife with insecurity as he struggles to pass in school and deal with his late developing puberty.
Meanwhile, Wendla's curiosity of sexual reproduction, dealt with haphazardly by her strict mother (played Danielle Sade James), crashes head on with Melchior's conflicting urges in a brutally powerful, if not oddly misplaced first act scene.
"[The actor's] projection was good I thought," said Anna Bush, sophomore dance major, referring to the intense and unabashed line delivery throughout.
The play has received a creative restoration of late, recently adapted into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.
And while the Theatre Department offered no melodies or harmonies (confusing some viewers expecting the musical), the modern rejuvenation was certainly apparent underneath the overwrought writing.
Directed by Kate Loconti, the adaptation stayed very close to the original material and the English translation by Jonathan Franzen. Although the actors seemed comfortable with the extremely literary, eloquent language, the audience's comprehension of the narrative remained questionable.
"I'm not really sure how I feel about [the play]," said Equasia Jennings, sophomore vocal performance major. "Half of the time I didn't know what was going on."
The play's progression was certainly not a prime example of traditional storytelling. Each scene stands on its own for the most part, with emotions from each intersecting throughout the action. However, in a play that deals directly with the complexities of adolescence these is no place for simple "cause and effect" writing.
Wedekind's writing along with the bare-bones stage direction was initially frustrating, with umbrellas representing graves and masked phantoms representing authoritarian school administrators.
Upon further consideration, however, it seems too easy to brush the adaptation off as too simple or too respectful of the original material. Loconti and company illustrate the universality of the topics being discussed, transcending gender, race, and ethnicity.
Levin stands out from the cast as Moritz, fusing dark-comedy with true tragedy without much of a rift in the performance. Most of the cast overacts, but most of the time for good measure. This is not a play with much subtly and the cast knew this. After all, if the message is already spelled out, why not yell it out?
In the middle of act two a particular scene involving four schoolteachers, a student on trial, and shameless masturbation worked to save any audience member who had given up trying to understand the twisty dialogue and opted to enjoy the array of comfy seating.
Though there were flaws throughout the play, most of it came from Wedekind's pen rather than Loconti's direction or the cast and crew's adaptation. Perhaps there's a good reason Spring Awakening is now a rock musical on stage. While Wedekind's themes remain ageless, his words sound strained and a bit clocked out.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
