And the Children Shall Lead: Spring Awakening the Play at Mobtown

          It's never easy being a teenager, no matter what century you live in, but one can guess it was particularly difficult for adolescents in 19th century rural Germany where playwright Frank Wedekind sets his 1891 play, "Spring Awakening."

          Melchior (Josh Kemper), Moritz (Chris Magorian) and Wendla (Melanie Glickman), are three 14-year-olds at the center of this play, now at the Mobtown Theater;  the boys deal with what they call "masculine stirrings" while Wendla chaffs at her mother's insistence she wear a longer dress.

         These are children who are just beginning to gain an inkling of what it is to be adults, at least in body, as they experience feelings they cannot explain or control.  In a scene both comic and pathetic, Wendla's mother (Cathy Shipley), struggling mightily against years of sexual repression, tries desperately to tell her daughter how it isn't "the stork" that accounts for new babies.  She can arm her daughter with no better information than "you must love your husband" to explain procreation.

          The play opens with the entire 16-member cast assembled on stage, divided between the youths and the adults, separate and opposed. Girls and boys, girls and girls, boys and boys, intertwine, exploring each other while the adults, in the background, appear to stand in judgment. A maypole is then introduced, and the children take their expected positions, dancing the dance as tradition demands...but as the elders exit the stage, the teens smile, as though to say, "silly adults," casting aside the maypole streamers and embracing the joys of free expression.

           Wedekind, however, is more interested in the sorrows of such expression, as Melchior, a "philosopher," concludes there is no such thing as love, that all actions are born of selfishness, and puts his theories into practice with the similarly sensitive Wendla.

          When Wendla insists that Melchior beat her so that she might better understand what her friend, Martha (Martha Robichaud) suffers daily at her father's hand, Melchior refuses,  becoming angry at Wendla's insistence, and when he grants Wendla her wish, his emotions boil over; he literally pummels her into the ground.

           It's a shocking scene, as the characters one moment are contemplating the beauty of sunlight seen through branches or asking existential questions like "What are we doing in this world?" to exploding violently, moving from tentative curious kisses, to rape.  The actors do an excellent job of portraying the dichotomy of their characters, mixing childlike wonder with all-too-adult desire and aggression.

           The adults in the cast range from the stock fascist-headmaster (David C. Allen) to Laura Malkus' sensitive portrayal of Melchior's mother, a woman likely more at home in the 1990s than 1890s, given her let-kids-be-kids attitude.

          One senses that Wedekind would have been happier in modern times as well, as this play-which was adapted for Broadway as a musical in 2006-is definitely ahead of its time, given the themes of sexual expression, both hetero and homosexual, as well as abortion, masturbation, suicide, and gender roles.  While her friends express dislike for their own sex, reflecting the mores of a time when boys were most prized, Wendla proves a feminist as she defiantly exclaims "I'm happy to be a girl!'"

         The play takes a turn into the macabre in the final act as Melchior, exiled to reform school for daring to put on paper his thoughts on "copulation," encounters Moritz's ghost and a man in bird-like mask.  Each offer Melchior their hand. Is there greater happiness to be found in death where one can be free of Puritanical repression, or is life still the ultimate gift, even if it means living as a social and moral outcast? For Wedekind, this is the question of adolescence, rhetorical for the vast majority, but all too real for others.

          Brian A. Erickson-Long, Robert Dover, Katie Neuof and Delroy Cornick do an excellent job in set, graphic, light and sound design. The set is simplistic, but evocative, as large boards, set at various angles, depict scenes that might be taken from a child's reader-sketches of a girl's dress, a boy's tunic, sewing needle and thread, the alphabet. There are even oversized letter blocks which serve as everything from rocks for the boys to sit upon to contemplate the sky to Wendla's sick bed.  Music bookends the play, chimes like a children's rhyme, adding to the play's surrealistic edge.

          Kudos to Director Matthew J. Bowerman for coordinating such a large cast in this 3-hour production, originally conceived by the late Terry Long, noted local director and a member of the Mobtown's board of directors. Mr. Long had begun rehearsals when he died suddenly last fall.

          Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind and translated by Jonathan Franzen is now at The Mobtown Theater at Meadow Mill, 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 114 in Hampden, Baltimore City, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and select Sundays at 4 p.m. through March 14. Tickets are $15 general admission, $12 students and seniors. Call 410-467-3057 or visit www.mobtownplayers.com for more information.

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