Review: Spring Awakening

Teenagers in crisis in the 1800s reflect our own time

There has been a rarely seen hype around Spring Awakening from Broadway to First Line and for once, one is tempted to claim, not without reason.

It is an unusually captivating musical, regardless of genre, and Asko Sarkola & co at the City Theatre has once again had an alert and accurate musical nose, when the Nordic vanguard puts it on in a production that has all the prerequisites to become a classic.

At the same time, it may pay to keep a reasonably cool head. The American theatre street numero uno is a stronghold of conservatism in comparison to any small Nordic town and the piece is perhaps not quite as sensational as one could easily be led to believe.

We have seen cool, and thematically so important, rock musicals before in our latitudes, and if we talk about American predecessors, for example, we did in the past. Purely an equally dizzying impression at the time.

What makes Spring Awakening unique is, of course, the setup itself. To let Frank Wedekind’s slightly anarchist, deeply socially critical play from 1891 – which was so radical that it was banned at home for decades and was not shown in an uncensored state until the 70s in England and the United States – act as a mirror to our own time.

How do we appear in the light of yesterday? What has changed in the end?

Timelessly fresh music

Librettist Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik let the more than 130-year-old, more or less crisis-ridden teenagers in a small German town make generational and conventional rebellions in the tone of our time, but against the visual backdrop of their time (as simple as it is effectively evoked by Jyrki Seppä and Maija Pekkanen).

So we are dealing with a bunch of “rebels” dressed in suits and dresses, who use the means of pop and rock to shout out their anxiety towards incomprehensible parents, authoritative teachers and a hypocritical adult world in general.

Sheik’s music may not be exactly original – he emanates from the singer-songwriter tradition and seems to like English 80s pop above all – but it has a timelessly universal quality, which feels decidedly fresh.

It is, especially in the abundant lyrical passages, emotionally present in a concretely perceptible way and also cleverly conceptualized in the sense that it prioritizes music-dramatic credibility and integrity over cheap hitmaking.

Neil Hardwick is a director who is sometimes too smart for his own good, but here he lets the brain and heart operate in optimal harmony. With the willing help of choreographer Harri Kuorelahti, he puts a wonderful twist on his super-cohesive and enormously energetic youth collective, which is nevertheless given enough space between verses to develop their respective characters.

Strangers in their own world

In the focal point we have the hypersensitive Wendla (a genuinely touching Sara Melleri), who tries in vain to milk her mother on how children are born – no panic, she will find out in time – the idealistic freethinker Melchior (a credible Jarkko Tamminen) and, not least, the unfortunate Moritz (a fairytale mischief Petrus Kähkönen), who does not have time to worry about Latin homework when learning to become an adult is on fire.

Everyone, professionals and students, sings with life and desire and mostly purely, although the singing prize probably goes to Mariko Pajalahti’s generally confused Ilse, and you are backed up by Lasse Hirvi and his powerful, stylishly playing septet with Mongo Aaltonen as the rhythmic primus engine.

Jari Pehkonen and Leena Rapola , on the other hand, are only at times a little farcical, slightly schematic, as representatives of a narrow-minded and emotionally traumatised adult generation, of which Melchior’s liberally compassionate mother is the only exception.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that it is barking to hell. However, not for everyone, not immediately and not without us, at best, being able to learn a lesson or two from it.

And no, of course, very little has changed since it began. Parents still find it laughably difficult to communicate with their offspring about natural things, hypocrisy and bigotry of all kinds still flourish and teenagers are still strangers in their own world.

Is anyone surprised?