A tidal wave of surging adolescent hormones breaks against a stony wall of adult repression in Spring Awakening, the 1891 German play turned rock musical that’s currently making its second attempt to charm British audiences. It didn’t make much of a mark on the West End in 2009, despite being a big Broadway hit. But this revival by Rupert Goold has a coiled-spring energy that makes it feel ready to awaken new fans.
It’s a gorgeous, complex staging: Miriam Buether’s design deploys a wall of tinted glass to make actors disappear and reappear in a single lighting cue, and makes projected chalk doodles and lines dance around its cast of teenage rebels. But at its heart, Spring Awakening is about something simple: the way that if you deny teenage sexuality and individuality an outlet, the consequences are disastrous.
Fiendishly smart Melchior is bored of rote-learning Latin at school and getting smacked for his smart-arse replies. His friend Moritz is being punished for his academic failings and tormented by wet dreams. And Wendla is begging her mother for some glimpse into the adult world of sex, one that 19th-century morality keeps a closely-guarded secret.
Productions of Spring Awakening sometimes cast young actors in these teenage roles but this staging leaves nothing to chance: experienced player Laurie Kynaston captures all of Melchior’s preternatural intelligence and unthinking cruelty, while Amara Okereke as Wendla has a wonderfully flexible, beautiful voice that makes her refrain Mama Who Bore Me into a heartbreaking lament. Around them, the supporting cast are impressively choreographed by Lynne Page: at one point, they become a living piano, each actor a single key that subsides into a passionate moan when pressed. At others, they pop out of hidden trap doors in the stage or roll slowly down its steps, in a treacly ooze of teenage longing and apathy.
There’s the odd fun number – the Green Day-style Totally F***ed has an infectious joy here – but this production can feel too tightly choreographed to bring out the gutsy rock and roll energy of Duncan Sheik’s music. But if it never breaks out like a teenager’s spotty face, there’s serious power here. Melchior claims to care about social equality but it’s painfully clear that his sexual interest in Wendla is a selfish one: she’s left devastated by it, finally finding the pain her sheltered upbringing has been missing.
Perhaps Spring Awakening originally struck more of a chord with Broadway audiences because the repressive world it depicts is closer to the high-pressure world of American high schools than more permissive British secondaries. But as Covid restrictions force us all further apart, its rich atmosphere of longing feels powerfully current. It’s as soft and heartbreaking as an overheard sob in the night.
Almeida Theatre, to Jan 22; almeida.co.uk
