Seminal work still has a voice.
It never occurred to me that this might be true of Frank Wedekind’s wonderful, seminal play (1890-91; not staged till 1906, in Berlin by Max Reinhardt) about cramped youth growing up in Bismarckian Germany but feeling its way to a fin-de-siècle or late 20th century morality: a morality that found a place for natural instincts and common sense.
I wonder if the issue is about age. In Max Lewendel’s beautifully observed, trenchant staging, Icarus Theatre Collective’s cast of eight (Icarus are currently touring Spring Awakening alongside Romeo and Juliet) were, with one exception, 20-something youngsters, acting the role of what appeared like 16 or 17 year olds.
All the personae are victims. The overlarded word abuse might be apt in some cases. But their main abuser is life itself. Wedekind has them younger. The pregnant Wendla (Gabrielle Dempsey), doomed victim of an unseen abortionist (whose ominous knock on the Bergman’s front door is a final turning point) is 13 turning 14; the philosophical Melchior, through the prism of whose intellect the play’s events are largely viewed, catechised and summed up, is 14 too; and so, presumably, is his screwed-up, still huggably naîve young friend Moritz (exquisitely personified by Christopher Smart).
Hans (Johannes or Hänchen, Kaiden Dubois), sampling the delights of masturbation over an erotic postcard, and embarking on gay first infatuation with his much-kissed chum Ernst (Smart again, in some well-judged if ironic doubling of roles) is a classmate of both. An attractive performer in more senses than one, Dubois is Icarus’s Romeo. Worth seeking out.
This is sex for Year Nines. Perhaps, to recover the impact it had before the First World War, this play needs to be acted by children (several youth theatre productions have been attempted recently). Certainly that would be possible on radio. Wedekind’s criminals are the grown ups, presented in a slightly too Expressionist Gymnasium staff meeting where adulthood is not examined but sneered at and pelted: as with, say, Peter Maxwell Davies’s like-minded opera Resurrection (written, as it happens, for Germany), the target is authority of any kind.
Nietzsche used to parody those same hide-bound, rule-enervated school institutions of his day (parallels with our own post-Baker or Govian curriculum interference); and likewise Remarque at the start of All Quiet on the Western Front; but Nietzsche recognised the huge good they did, too. Life serves up a mixed bag.
Max Lewendel’s production is played out on an imaginative dark set (no separate design acknowledgment) in which what looks like an everted Golgotha cross – apt for Wendla and Moritz yet a symbol for all of them - though it could be a smashed-up railway track that is just waiting for a collision.
Various bits of clutter are pulled on and off, the cast being dab hands at scene-shifting. It is not an impeccable staging (whenever was there one, of anything?). Yet it is next best: nigh-on faultless.
This cast is quite superb. I looked for more definition, more structured individuality, more salient details of characterisation, from David McLaughlin’s Melchior. Romeo and Juliet’s Mercutio – a not wholly dissimilar role – McLaughlin is a bit like Jamie Parker’s Scripps in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys: the shrewd observer, standing somewhat apart from events; yet integral too.
But because Melchior is in a sense ageless, his reading is in many senses right. He speaks well, does irony as well as he does kindness and empathy, and his sheer strength of character – albeit wobbly at the crucial moments, as at the end where he is torn between a luring corpse (‘kill yourself too’) and a mystery (‘become an adult; it is at least an option’) – shines through.
One of the least satisfactory scenes comes just before the interval. It is the rape of Wendla, who a few minutes earlier has been reaching out, in a sado-masochistic exchange that stands for sexual come-on, to urge Melchior to beat her. It is snatched – such things are – but on a cramped bunk bed which is maybe not a bed, also a bit botched; and set just a little too far stage left. Does she want it? No, she says. But what does she mean?
True, the rape – with its consequences - is meant to be Spring Awakening’s biggest puzzle. Does he, or doesn’t he? And is it really a defilement? Here, he goes to it with a will. By the end, when confronted by the Strindberg-like Masked Man (Zachary Holton) originally played by Wedekind himself, and having experienced the nasty bullying and collective onanistic romps of a Reformatory, Melchior is still trying to work out the morality in his head.
As the survivor, he will take this confusion into the future. As an adult, he will most likely resolve and outgrow it; but will do so by recognising that some things in life are too finely balanced to be soluble. Scepticism will have to cohabit with and/or make concessions to decision-making.
Zachary Holton’s presence – first as angry parent, then as mysterious hovering presence – is a slightly awkward one. One fluffed entry didn’t help, but he moves awkwardly, speaks admirably and (here) impresses little. The difference in age seems awkward: the role needs no antiquated sage, but a strange, philosophic kind of postgrad.
But I’d like to see him as Capulet on tour – a role that would fit him perfectly. A bit like the Bishop of London, he could also make a superb Friar Laurence. A veteran of the Scottish Play - Duncan, Siward, Old Man, he is cut out for all three. But the role that would test him, and that someone owes him, is the Porter.
One of the girls – Perlam or Barrett (or a Mercutio type: Nicol Williamson, say) might have characterised the Masked Man, this kind of Ibsen escapee, far better. For the remainder of the cast are, one and all, magnificent.
Gemma Barrett’s Frau Bergman (Wendla’s all-too-proper, if put-upon mum, a kind of domestic cipher) caught my eye and ear from the start: wonderfully, arrestingly spoken (maybe Voice Coach Emma Vane’s work on her Romeo and Juliet Nurse has paid off; but she sounds a natural), with richly, amusingly expressive features, Barrett excelled all evening (including as a particularly nauseating staff member). She has range and depth.
Gabrielle Dempsey (Wendla) came closest to suggesting the very young age of these ill-fated participants. Whatever her years, we can believe her confusion about pregnancy (storks, and presumably Father Christmas, are still de rigueur in the Bergman household; her mother is determined she shall remain a child – perhaps understandably, 12/13 being the cusp): the only surprise, perhaps, is that she has it thrust upon her (literally, by Melchior’s own confused priapic assault (perhaps little Hans’s should not have been the only organ on show), which she strives, or part-strives, to resist), rather than actively, eagerly if naïvely desires it.
This was a beautifully gauged, deep performance from an actress laden with charisma and sensitivity.
Georgina Periam as Melchior’s mother, Frau Gabor, the one adult who comes near to an understanding (hence pilloried by Holton’s merciless, self-satisfied father, his much more impressive role) was a joy to watch all evening.
The set-piece scene where she writes to Moritz (‘Lieber Herr Stiefel…’ - he being onstage, aloft – near-crucified – throughout, received letter in hand), was possibly – along with every word uttered by Moritz - this production’s masterpiece: as poignant as Tatyana’s gut-wrenching letter scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
Nicole Anderson has the bit roles, but impressed, especially in the (to a degree) maturer Ilse’s more confident assertions. She, too, offers a path to sanity. (In one brief sequence Anderson appears, touchingly, as a not unperceptive little sister, Thea). Appropriately, she is Icarus Theatre’s Juliet on the current tour.
That leaves Moritz. Lichfield-born, Birmingham-trained Christopher Smart (how apt a name, when madness beckons) is the undoubted star of the show. The range of faces, of wide-eyed amazement or and face-twisting puzzlement, the bursts of explosive enthusiasm, confused frustration and deep-ingrained pessimism, reveal an actor of quite terrific range.
Endlessly studious Stiefel junior is a sexual as well as intellectual ingénu. One feels that if only he could have shared his seed with Hans or Ernst, or been inducted by Ilse, some of the tensions might have lifted. Smart’s Moritz has zeal in plenty, is a dutiful and presumably fledgling scholar who quotes the need to prepify or revise every time a life experience threatens; yet is, like Moritz, a genuine seeker. And it is he who will commit suicide before he even reaches his GCSEs or a shared orgasm: Moritz becomes precisely the headless man of his dream, early in the play.
And that is the tragedy of it: not only are they, children and parents alike, headless, whether through callow unreadiness or mindless conformity or simple self-mutilation (though Melchior keeps his, and strugglingly emerges the real sage of the show); but so are all of us. We have scant hope of solving life’s riddles (religion is a salient one, shifting moralities another), however much astronomers and psychologists and life’s other cryptographers can tell us. Moritz’s headlessness is a symbol of us all.
With Frühlings Erwachen, some 20 years before Expressionism took off (and what they termed Stationendramen: a kind of Golgotha for the stage, which is what Lewendel’s testing, thought-provoking and thought-through presentation conceivably evokes), the 27-year-old Frank Wedekind, the source of Berg’s Lulu (shortly to be toured to Birmingham’s Hippodrome), has succeeded in writing a masterpiece, flawed yet sensationally ahead of its times, in which every character is a Jedermann. Or is that what plays do? Nonetheless, no mean feat.
Icarus's productions soar
TEENAGE angst and doomed romance were the central themes of two nights of back-to-back theatre as the Icarus Theatre Collective arrived in Swansea with its latest productions.
But while the second was an all too familiar tale of Shakespearian tragedy, the opening night was a much darker affair.
As alluded to by the 16+ age rating, Spring Awakening, Frank Wedekind's seminal play of sexual oppression in Fin de Siècle Germany, was never intended to be an easy ride. Nor could any play whose subject matter included rape, violence, suicide and abortion hope to be.
From the offset, an innocent children's game of tag descends into a vicious circle of sexual discovery, with disastrous consequences.
The predominantly youthful cast grew, learned, and in some cases died together, in a powerful, gripping show that didn't shy away from its subject matter. In fact, far from being subtle, it practically beat the audience across the head with its message, by graphically depicting beatings and attacks live on-stage.
The play was based around a suitably bleak set, the centrepiece of which was a jagged iron crucifix that cast a foreboding shadow over proceedings.
And even more foreboding were the fleeting appearance of a mysterious masked man, a devil-like character who elicited an audible gasp from the audience.
Icarus's second production of the weekend was a more traditional affair, a faithful interpretation of timeless classic Romeo And Juliet.
The much-performed tale was passionately delivered, and despite its two hour plus running time, never seemed laboured. From the iconic "where for art thou" balcony scene to a suitably ferocious and bloody fight scene, this was Shakespeare-by-numbers that, while thoroughly entertaining, did little in the way of re-imagining or personalising.
That is a shame, because the one area in which Icarus did not conform was in its decision to change the gender of main antagonist Tybalt.
While cross-dressing is a familiar occurrence in Shakespearean plays, casting Gabrielle Dempsey in the role of a notorious hot-blooded young man added a new angle to the performance.
And the lighter moments of the play were mainly thanks to Gemma Barrett who put in a fantastically over-the-top comic performance as Juliet's faithful Nurse.
Icarus served up two thoroughly compelling productions that, while similar in their outcomes, couldn't have been more different in their delivery.
Making love, not war, in the Kaiser’s land
FRANK WEDEKIND liked to shock. He lived in a society - that of Germany in the late 19th century, the era of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm - that, he felt, needed shocking out of religious and institutional complacency, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalism, and moribund social and personal values.
It is this that gave rise to his plays Pandora's Box, the inspiration for Berg's sensual opera Lulu (currently being staged by Welsh National Opera); and, before that, to the iconoclastic and poetic Spring Awakening, finished in 1891, but first staged in 1906, in Berlin.
Spring Awakening is touring, to venues from the exquisite theatre at Chipping Norton, a former Salvation Army citadel, to the Key Theatre, Peterborough, in a passionate, no-holds-barred production by Icarus Theatre Collective. The director, Max Lewendel, fields young actors talented (and shameless) enough to evoke the teenage roles that this challenging play demands.
As profoundly moral as it is shocking - graphic scenes of sexuality and violence and a morbid graveyard sequence form essential ingredients - Spring Awakening was one of the earliest plays to be staged at the National Theatre, when Peter Firth and Michael Kitchen - icons of the small screen nowadays - played the two fervid leads, Melchior Gabor and Moritz Stiefel: instinctive young people striving after a moral compass in a world peopled by morons; for the play treats adults with unveiled contempt. The Church, judiciary, teachers, politicians, and even parents reveal their hopeless inadequacy in coping with their own lives or their emotionally beleaguered offspring, battered by puberty and the trials of emerging adulthood.
Here sex is the springboard: for these 14- and 15-year-olds, inexperience, experimentation, guilt, repentance, and, conversely, asseverativeness accompany a deep-seated longing - sense of duty, even - to fashion a set of values that make sense instead of just being trotted out.
Traditionalism, we infer, is stifling the country: it is the state that is obscene, not they with their toyings with free love; the young people here, dead and alive, are a symbol for the doomed future of Germany - a militaristic, acquisitive future lurching into a First World War.
Amid this moral maze, there were performances one could praise to the skies. The hapless mothers (Georgina Periam, Gemma Barrett), one of whom pontificatingly declines to help her son's friend, so that these spurned cris-de-coeur lead on to his suicide; the other (it was Beryl Reid at the National) insists, perhaps understandably, on her 14-year-old daughter's having the backstreet abortion that kills her.
Gabrielle Dempsey as the girl, Wendla, seeking experience and yet shying away in the face of it, confirmed not just the talents of this young actress, but the brilliance of Wedekind's emotional microscope.
Lewendel's graphic production could scarcely be faulted. As the principal boys, David McLaughlin is fine in the Peter Firth role: the survivor, surfing rage and pent-up desires to the point of rape, but embracing some emergent compromise. Christopher Smart is ravishing as the inward-turned, confused, scholarly, and ultimately self-extinguishing Moritz. So is Kaiden DuBois as Hans, the self-abusing, exploratorily gay friend, and Nicole Anderson as the more experienced muse figure Ilse, whose good sense might have saved them all.
Zachary Holton moves weakly as the crucial tempting/redeeming Masked Man at the end, but proves strong as Melchior's tetchy, judgemental, unforgiving father, whose entrenched immobility, that of a "self-perpetuating élite", sums up the whole problem.
"Max Lewendel’s beautifully observed, trenchant staging".
"Moritz (exquisitely personified by Christopher Smart)".
"Worth seeking out".
"Max Lewendel’s production is played out on an imaginative dark set".
"Nigh-on faultless".
"This cast is quite superb".
"[David McLaughlin] speaks well, does irony as well as he does kindness and empathy, and his sheer strength of character shines through".
"The cast are, one and all, magnificent".
"Gemma Barrett’s Frau Bergman caught my eye and ear from the start: wonderfully, arrestingly spoken, with richly, amusingly expressive features, Barrett excelled all evening (including as a particularly nauseating staff member). She has range and depth".
"Gabrielle Dempsey (Wendla): a beautifully gauged, deep performance from an actress laden with charisma and sensitivity".
"Georgina Periam as Melchior’s mother was a joy to watch all evening".
"As poignant as Tatyana’s gut-wrenching letter scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin".
"Nicole Anderson has the bit roles, but impressed, especially in the (to a degree) maturer Ilse’s more confident assertions".
"Christopher Smart is the undoubted star of the show. The range of faces, of wide-eyed amazement, face-twisting puzzlement, the bursts of explosive enthusiasm, confused frustration and deep-ingrained pessimism, reveal an actor of quite terrific range".
"Smart’s Moritz has zeal in plenty".
"Lewendel’s testing, thought-provoking and thought-through presentation. No mean feat".
"Icarus's productions soar".
"A powerful, gripping show".
"And even more foreboding were the fleeting appearance of a mysterious masked man, a devil-like character who elicited an audible gasp from the audience".
"Icarus served up two thoroughly compelling productions that, while similar in their outcomes, couldn't have been more different in their delivery".
"A passionate, no-holds-barred production by Icarus Theatre Collective".
"As profoundly moral as it is shocking - graphic scenes of sexuality and violence and a morbid graveyard sequence form essential ingredients".
"Performances one could praise to the skies".
"Gabrielle Dempsey as the girl, Wendla, seeking experience and yet shying away in the face of it, confirmed not just the talents of this young actress, but the brilliance of Wedekind's emotional microscope".
"Lewendel's graphic production could scarcely be faulted".
"Christopher Smart is ravishing as the inward-turned, confused, scholarly, and ultimately self-extinguishing Moritz".
