Review



Tuesday April 20, 10
by Sarah Terez Rosenblum, CenterStage Chicago

 "I've made a horrible mistake. The play I'm attending was written in 1891."

 

This text, sent at 7:59 p.m. on the opening night of Promethean Theatre Ensemble's lightly humorous drama, "Spring Awakening" says it all...about a certain closed-minded reviewer. Luckily an ill-advised text is ephemeral (unless you're Tiger Woods), while Frank Wedekind's perceptive, endlessly relevant masterpiece has proved enduring.

 

The compassionate story of a group of teenagers coping with academic pressure and burgeoning sexuality, "Spring Awakening" comes to life under Stephen Murray's insightful direction. Like the musical version now on Broadway, this adaptation uses masks to blur the identities of the inaccessible adults, thereby turning the focus on the children, each of whom, like a canary in a coal mine, manifests society's flaws. Smart, worldly Melchior Gabor finds himself unable to contain his urges, free-spirited Ilse runs away to live the bohemian life of a figure model, underachieving Moritz Stiefel struggles with the question of whether to destroy himself or his parents' expectations, and innocent Wendla Bergmann pays the price for her mother's primness.

Owing in large part to the actors' collective facility with Wedekind's beautiful but potentially difficult language, the script rings as true as it did the day it was written. Sure, the play originated as a critique of fin de siècle Germany's sexually oppressive mores, but throw in a father/daughter purity ball and cast Sarah Palin as Frau Bergmann, and "Spring Awakening" could have been written last year. Yet the show truly comes alive in the pauses, every cast member making reliably inventive choices, imbuing their actions and physical relationships with truth and complexity. Standouts Sara Gorsky, Nick Lake and Devon Candura are particularly impressive. With a sinuous voice and easy physicality, Gorsky specifically, is larger-than-life yet authentic, a difficult feat.

 

Although on paper a 100-year-old show coming in at over two hours may sound like a drag, in truth, "Spring Awakening"'s exhilarating blend of conversant actors, lyrical language (a favorite line: "No mortal has ever walked over graves so enviously"), and significant themes results in an exquisite piece of theater, timeless and universal.