REVIEW
Spring Awakening
Where: Belfry Studio, 1291 Gladstone Ave.
When: Until Nov. 2
Tickets: $28.50 general. Senior/student discounts available.
Info, reservations: 250-385-6815, belfry.bc.ca
Rating (out of five): Three and a half stars
While a self-possessed teenager may feel otherwise, adolescent angst was around long before James Dean personified youthful rebellion, paving the way for a multitude of Hollywood movies that enthrall audiences.
Its timelessness is strikingly evident in Spring Awakening, the Tony Award-winning musical that proved a bracing tonic to jukebox musicals and revivals when it opened on Broadway eight years ago.
In what the Canadian College of Performing Arts aptly terms its most edgy musical, its gifted cast of third-year students does justice to Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s adaptation.
German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 masterpiece was scandalous for its frankness in dramatizing the anxiety of clueless teens discovering sex in a climate of moral oppression.
Indeed, addressing as it does issues including abortion, child abuse, suicide and sexual confusion — no thanks to parents unwilling to explain the facts of life — there’s no shortage of tough emotional sledding.
This being a rock musical with the dramatic liberties that implies, the sight of the show’s attractive cast of 20-somethings garbed in period costumes can be initially disconcerting, which delays emotional involvement. They must play characters 14 years old and beyond who are dealing with dated issues in a provincial 19th-century German town before seguing into contemporized dialogue and lyrics such as, “I don’t do sadness.”
While the CCPA production, staged with the support of the Belfry Theatre, isn’t flawless, a deficiency most noticeable in its first act, you’ll be floored by the time it’s over. Director Michael Shamata and the company admirably rise to the challenge of establishing the show’s tone of stylized austerity. Indeed, Spring Awakening, enhanced by Shamata’s own stage design that echoes its Expressionistic origins, will never be confused with Oklahoma! The spare set features a pair of towering bookcases, a decaying rear grey brick wall adorned with a period oil painting and a mobile, multi-functional ramp.
Although some theatre-goers with conventional tastes may regard the production as off-putting because of its starkness and dark material, one of its chief strengths is how efficiently Shamata moves the action along. It helps considerably that the score, a combination of beautiful melodies and driving alt-rock flourishes from musical director and pianist Heather Burns and her tight ensemble, melds seamlessly with the dialogue.
On opening night, the lack of applause punctuating musical numbers wasn’t because of a lack of appreciation for the songs, many with clipped endings. Rather, it would have disrupted the flow. Ironically, when opening-nighters did first unleash pent-up gratitude, it was for what most closely resembled a traditional Broadway showstopper.
It was for Totally F---ed, the electrifying ensemble number headlined by Melchior (Ian Crowe), the student radical who realizes he’s being forced to take the blame for a tragic event.
While Crowe’s musical talent outshines his dramatic potential here, notably as he conveys the frustration of being stuck between adolescence and adulthood, he does a decent job of anchoring the plea for sex education with Siobhan Barker as Wendla, the student who arouses his lust.
Barker rises impressively above the show’s more obvious affectations, conveying purity and vulnerability. Her lovely mezzo-soprano voice is repeatedly put to good use, notably on The Guilty Ones, her moving duet with Melchior following their confused tryst in a hayloft.
Also making a particularly strong impression is Austin Eckert as Moritz, Melchior’s intense, dazed and confused friend tortured by erotic dreams he’s convinced are driving him crazy. Of all the schoolboys whose hand-microphones and modern hairdos are amusingly at odds with Amy King and Ursina Luther’s impressive period costumes, Eckert is a dynamic standout, especially when belting out rock tunes during the show’s more riveting second act.
Other standouts in this melancholic, yet ultimately hopeful, musical include Kirsti Hack as doomed child-abuse survivor Ilse, notably during The Dark I Know Well, her achingly beautiful lament that also showcases Kaely Cronk’s vocal skills. An amusingly coiffed Nick Heffelfinger is memorably arrogant — and deserves an award of bravery for his simulated masturbation sequence — as classmate Hanschen. So is John Han as Georg, a student who lusts after his piano teacher.
Amanda Lisman and Richard Hurst exhibit remarkable range and switch gears with apparent ease and consistent conviction as they portray a variety of unsympathetic adult authority figures.
Complementing Shamata’s artful exploitation of the Belfry’s intimate Studio space are R.J. Peters’ hypnotic, mood-matching lighting, Austin Eckert’s sound design and Laura Krewski’s inventive choreography.