Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening was first performed in 1906 and was immediately labelled as obscene, offensive and radical. Indeed, the issues addressed were radical: teenage sex, suicide, abortion and masturbation. However, even more radical was the authentic and realistic way in which these issues were portrayed.
Now more than 100 years later, this daring depiction of teenage self-discovery is more relevant than ever. Spring Awakening is a vibrant and poignant story about a group of young teenagers coming of age despite their repressed and religious upbringings. In a world where adults hold all the cards, three school friends experience the exhilarating and turbulent journey into adulthood and embark on a voyage of personal discovery and sexual awakening.
The story is all at once sad, disturbing, and touchingly funny. Spring Awakening allows the audience to see sex, violence, puberty and great expectations through the eyes of youth.
Note: This show is rated 14+ due to mature subject matter.
Tickets: $15, $10 students. Available at InfoSource in the UCC Atrium and the Grand Theatre box office.
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8:00 pm Spring Awakening
See https://theatreinlondon.ca/2009/11/spring-awakening/ for details.
Location: McManus Stage
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8:00 pm
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27
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8:00 pm Spring Awakening
See https://theatreinlondon.ca/2009/11/spring-awakening/ for details.
Location: McManus Stage
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8:00 pm
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28
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2:00 pm Spring Awakening
See https://theatreinlondon.ca/2009/11/spring-awakening/ for details.
Location: McManus Stage
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8:00 pm Spring Awakening
See https://theatreinlondon.ca/2009/11/spring-awakening/ for details.
Location: McManus Stage
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2:00 pm
Thank you, Theatre Western, for bringing to London audiences Wedekind’s classic coming-of-age story showing the tragic consequences of society’s doomed attempt to suppress human nature in the name of a morality unwilling or unable to reconcile what one ought to do with what one wants to do.
While every cast member has his or her moments, especially praiseworthy are the performances of Adam Moryto (Melchior) and Philip Wiseman (Moritz). Both expertly navigate the play’s tonal passage from the Spring of the more humourous aspects of sexual awakening to the Winter as sexuality’s darker aspect emerges once "morality" begins its work of destroying and perverting the essential decency of their characters.
I must also single out Katy Clark who seamlessly conveys Wendla’s powerful innate feeling for the facts of life while intellectually lacking any facts at all. Also noteworthy are Samatha White’s versatility and the ensemble performance of the boys in the scene set in the Reformitory.
The scene between Hansy (Taylor Scragg) and Ernst (Gordon Jim) is tender and delicately handled, but I wonder whether a contemporary audience will hear the subtext early enough in the scene to appreciate fully the nature of the relationship.
A few very minor quibbles: some of the scene transitions took too long; some names from history and myth were mispronounced, jarring the few of us familiar with them; Moritz’s pistol is nearly a hundred years ahead of the play’s time period, and the gunshot was spectacularly dull.
But congratulations are due to all involved, as well as appreciation for the demands made on the time of those engaged in full-time university studies.
The opening night audience seemed to be comprised mostly of students. I do hope that other Londoners will be able to see this production. The play affirms life in the face of social and institutional support for a morality that relies on ignorance for its power to control — or destroy — body and soul. This makes this 19th-century play, sadly enough, very relevant to our own times.
That should be "Reformatory" — not "Reformitory".