Wedekind's Wunderkinds

Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening may have been banned from the stage in the 1890s, but unlike the troubled adolescents whose lives it chronicles, the play survived those growing pains to become one of the seminal works of German drama, not to mention the template for just about every teen tragedy from Rebel Without a Cause onward. Most recently, it inspired a Tony Award-winning musical version, which will come to the Hippodrome this spring. Whether or not you plan to catch the musical, you should not miss this rare opportunity to see the original play, currently running at the Mobtown Theater in a production conceived by the late Terry Long. One of Baltimore's most gifted and beloved young directors, Terry left us just as 2008 was drawing to a close, but he lives on in this unforgettable production - and, clearly, in the hearts of its cast and crew as well.

Mobtown is using a translation by Jonathan Franzen, who has lambasted the musical version as "insipid." That criticism seems disingenuous at first, since Franzen punctuates the Romantic rhetoric of the script with contemporary slang, much as the musical abruptly shifts tone from the Victorian melodrama of its dialogue scenes to punk rock anthems of pubescent angst. Granted, Franzen's depiction of a liaison between two lonely boys attains a bittersweet tenderness the musical undermines in order to make a cynical (and borderline-homophobic) joke. But as the story becomes increasingly and unremittingly grim, you may find yourself wishing for a little of the musical's humorous detachment, if only to relieve the urge to laugh in the wrong places.

Still, the climactic scene in a haunted cemetery proves Franzen's point. Rather than have the characters change their entire outlook at the last minute to facilitate a Broadway-style happy ending, Franzen stays true to Wedekind's more disturbing denouement, which compels our hero to make a Sophie's choice between clinging forever to youth and allowing himself to age - i.e., between dying now and dying later. Thanks to one of this production's inspired symbolic touches, though, this decision also becomes the play's most poignant moment, affirming in death a love that could never be acknowledged in life.

As staged by Matthew Bowerman, the show never missteps. Even a seemingly obvious motif, a music-box lullaby that plays each time a child succumbs to his brutish nature, achieves the disarming pathos of a requiem for lost innocence. And even an apparently awkward bit of blocking, such as a boy having to cross the width of the stage during the blackout after he commits suicide, foreshadows the lack of peace he will find in the afterlife. Best of all, Bowerman honors his predecessor by preserving Long's design ideas for the show's set and costumes, which are like breaths of spring air dispelling any vestige of 19th-century mustiness.

The set consists of charred pages from a gigantic children's storybook, scattered at odd angles as if discarded in a fit of childish discouragement. Adorned with Bavarian charcoal drawings lovingly rendered by Terry's husband, Brian Erickson-Long, they illustrate such cautionary tales as a little girl in a pinafore being tempted by a serpent in a tree to sample a Valentine heart that conceals the apple of knowledge - an ingenious metaphor for how sentimental prudishness about human sexuality can end up being just as fatal as the fall from Eden. Indeed, when these pages later serve as a field of toppling tombstones, we realize these kids have been dancing on their own graves all along.

Equally stunning is the costume palette, which confines the older characters to the strict blacks and whites of their simplistic moral code, leaving the children to flounder in shades of gray. Tantalizingly, each child sports a colored ribbon, as if to represent their as-yet-untapped potential, which might be realized if only society permitted it. In the production's breathtaking final image, as the youngsters turn to face the responsibilities of adulthood, their colors drop to the ground like autumn leaves. One can only hope that, like a windfall crop, their unfulfilled lives will fertilize the flowering of a new generation - if not in their time, then in our own.

There's no denying that the "children" in this cast are three to six years older than they are supposed to be, and this could be interpreted as a lapse of nerve, as if Mobtown has heeded the dubious advice of the parents in this play that their kids should wait a few years before delving into provocative literature like Goethe's Faust. I prefer, however, to think of this casting as an indication of how these young adults have been stifled by their culture and compelled to remain immature long after they should have grown up. In any case, whatever the portrayals consequently lose in verisimilitude and shock value, they gain in depth and insight.

As Melchior Gabor, a James Dean-type figure described by his father as having a "spring-like heart," Josh Kemper gives a tightly coiled performance that can spring from eerie calm to appalling cruelty in the blink of an eye. Rather than basking in Moritz Stiefel's debasement, in the manner of Sal Mineo, Chris Magorian rages against the dying of his light by racing against the clock. Frankly, his ranting is often at a speed that exceeds audience comprehension, but it leaves us feeling guilty for having failed to understand him while we had the chance. And like Natalie Wood before her, Melanie Glickman deftly tempers Wendla Bergman's angelic purity of spirit with the disquieting heat awakening in her loins. Alas, few of the actors playing the adults suggest that the battle for their souls was ever worth fighting.

This is particularly regrettable, since the play is most admirable for its even-handedness. Like the man for whom he was named, Benjamin Franklin, Wedekind knew that we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. Thus, his adults cannot be written off as monsters - in truth, many of the young people's actions are far worse - but they are damnably adept at deflecting personal responsibility. It is their pangs of conscience that redeem the young characters, and it is the ultimate success of this production that it leads the viewer to feel similarly contrite, regardless of age.

Spring Awakening runs at the Mobtown Theater, 3600 Clipper Mill Road in the Meadow Mill Complex, through March 14. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and select Sundays at 4. Tickets are $15. For reservations, log on to: www.mobtownplayers.com

 

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