Review: Spring Awakening
Spring awakens passionately and poetically in Helsinki City Theatre’s new musical
For the second time in a year, the Helsinki City Theatre will see faces shining with happiness and tears in the final bows of the premiere of a youth musical. Last autumn, the energetic cast of High School Musical glowed with joy after a successful premiere, now it’s Spring Awakening’s turn. This is rare and valuable in the tight grip of institutional theatre.
Based on Frank Wedekind’s classic play Spring Awakening, the award-winning musical premiered in the United States in 2006. When it was published in 1891, Wedekind’s play raised accusations of pornography and was repeatedly banned from being performed.
Considering the time of its publication, the play contains quite direct talk about both the internal and external turmoil of sexual awakening. The play has been transferred to the form of a musical without unnecessary and apparent modernization. In many ways, the world is different from Germany, which was permeated by bourgeois morality and double standards at the end of the 19th century, but sexuality is still a hot potato and the transition from childhood to adulthood is incomprehensible.
The performance will certainly appeal to young people struggling on the brink of adulthood, but it is especially recommended for their parents and educators.
It may be that it would be difficult to make Spring Awakening work as a drama of speech. The musical form distances and aestheticizes the (melo)dramatic story, saturated with passion, into its own unreality. Now there is room to tell the wild story boldly and directly.
Through the tougher
Spring Awakening is not a cotton candy-light and syrupy musical delight, but it deals with growing up through the heavier. At the same time as the desire awakens, the pressures and expectations increase both inside and in the surrounding community. The reality of the play includes incest, abortion, suicide and homosexuality. The tones are softer than in Wedekind’s play, but the Broadway version doesn’t have a sugary happy ending either.
The Finnish premiere directed by Neil Hardwick is not as trendy and fierce as the advertising and the English title suggest. Better that way. The performance is rather beautiful, evocative and even poetic. But there is also plenty of action, atmosphere, humour and energy.
The musical runs on fast cuts, simultaneous scenes, still images formed by the actors and gestural poses. Harri Kuorenlahti’s choreography successfully borrows the movement language of contemporary dance and combines it with dance numbers that move to the beat of rock and punk. The choreography that runs through the performance is involved in all movement and being on stage.
Fearlessly and truly
Hardwick and Kuorenlahti get a lot out of their ensemble consisting of very different talents. The whole group dances and sings distorted ballads and rebellious rock songs convincingly. The main stars act in the musical’s demanding genre fearlessly and realistically.
Sara Melleri, who sings and acts with a unique character, plays a strong role as the inquisitive and passionate Wendla, who falls in love with the omniscient but vulnerable Melchior of Jarkko Tamminen. Tamminen, who is no longer quite a teenager, credibly captures the young man’s clear-headedness and intensity with his unpretentious expression.
Petrus Kähkönen draws a harrowing picture of Moritz getting entangled in his passion. The scene depicting the budding love between boys between Teemu Mustonen and Samuel Harjanne is the most thrilling depiction of homosexuality in ages.
The world of authority is clearly separated from the reality of young people. Leena Rapola and Jari Pehkonen, who work carefully in their many roles as parents and teachers, are enough to become adults.
The performance is supported by a simple and magnificent spatial solution. The events unfold on a small stage podium in the middle of a large stage. The orchestra plays on stage, and part of the ensemble and the spectators who have claimed their seats on stage sit on both sides of the stage platform. The general public follows both the performance and the spectators on stage.
The set design doesn’t change once, but the space and atmosphere are constant. The performance is punctuated by Antti Rehtijärvi’s impressive and stylish lights. For once, there will be no cars or helicopters on the big stage.