Kirsty Stuart and Gavin Wright. Photo by Richard Campbell.Spring Awakening is the first time that both Grid Iron and Douglas Maxwell will have worked with a major play in the European repertoire. First produced in 1906, Wedekind’s text still has the power to shock and provoke, as it looks at how the adult machine represses and corrupts young people. Read more …
Douglas Maxwell's lean and dynamic new version re-locates the play in turn of the century Scotland. The co-production with the Traverse Theatre Company sets the action in a giant classroom, which becomes a metaphor for learning about life and death. A group of teenagers, aware of the decadent influences of Europe, are never the less trapped within the confines of a strict Calvinist education system. Parents and teachers expect their children to excel in the classroom, whilst imposing harsh restrictions against their natural sexual impulses.
Speaking about the production, Judith Doherty, co-artistic director of Grid Iron said, “we feel incredibly excited to be co-producing with the Traverse Theatre Company for the first time. They have provided enormous support in making this project a reality, not least because this is the first time Grid Iron have worked with a canonical text, so their dramaturgical advice is invaluable. Douglas Maxwell’s amazing response to Wedekind’s play shows that this work continues to have the power to shock people and to speak to adults about the mistakes we still make with our children today.”
This is still a stinging rebuke at the way children are treated. It stings with the truth for those who remember the emotional pain and fumbling uncertainty of being 14. It stings with truth for those who have entered the pact of parenthood and who know the fear of how much to tell – and when.
The play reveals its shocking modernity even as it describes a bygone era, capturing the head-versus-heart tension that occupies us still when private desire meets social decorum.
Maxwell’s adaptation has captured the clumsy poetry of teenagers waxing lyrical about their hopes and dreams – and as ever in teenage life, the comic and the tragic rub up against each other with an unnerving closeness.
A great and chilling drama.
Grid Iron’s site-specific hallmarks are very much in evidence in an expansively three-dimensional production.
Indeed part of the pleasure of Ben Harrison’s fluid and supple production is the constantly inventive staging.
Quick-footed and razor sharp ... but there are times where caricaturing trumps believability.
Thank goodness for Finn den Hertog and Kirsty Stuart, whose resonating performances as the tragic adolescents Moritz and Wendla bring real moral power to a sometimes impressive, but frustratingly uneven presentation.
Performed by a strong and talented cast of young and established actors, this is a frighteningly prophetic show that could become one of the highlights of the Traverse’s Autumn/Winter season.
Why Frank Wedekind's seminal play Spring Awakening still resonates
Springing back into action
Theatre preview: Spring Awakening, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Friday October 29, 2010, until Saturday November 13, 2010. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
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