Spring Awakening storms the Monument National
By Craig Cormack
“The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our life. And we often impose the most agonising suffering upon ourselves.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
Montreal’s contact theatre describes their new production “Spring Awakening” as a story about
“teenagers in a small-town struggle as they strive to discover the truth about their budding sexual feelings within the confines of the stern, religious moral code of their community.”
The original play was written over a 120 years ago by German dramatist Frank Wedekind
between 1890-91 and first performed in 1906. It was written in a different time but the issues
facing the characters are very true and relevant today.
The performance of 13 very brave and soul-bearing actors last night reminded me of a book I’d read many years ago written by Alice Miller called, “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence.” This book features commentary on 19th century Germanic child-rearing discussing how parents quite commonly whipped and beat their children believing punishment would produce good people. Instead, it produced a generation of people like Hitler and his contemporaries. Hitler was treated to daily beatings courtesy of his post-master father Alois. Wedekind captured this in his play and Contact Theatre’s production was right on the money.
My experience with this troupe’s performances “Next to Normal” and “Reefer Madness” have been exciting, dynamic, dramatic, comical, energetic. Each production has been individually compelling performance with dedicated actors who can sing and dance and top-notch live musicians providing the music and a second to none lighting and sound production.
Spring Awakening produced by Ally Brumer and directed by Deborah Friedman have reached a new level, a new stratosphere.
Each vignette between the characters followed by song propelled the play forward. The harmonies achieved by the cast brought me to almost an out of body experience. The audience melded into the characters challenges, fears, frustrations and helplessness. The choreography and the set anchored the production and kept it from flying apart, though at times feared that it would, but it made the experience exciting like flying on a rollercoaster of emotions. The story was bitter-sweet, bitter with the characters being under the jackboot of oppression, and sweet with the innocence of the youngsters caught up in their love and support for one and other. The tragedies presented almost made me lose hope. But in the end, the strength of absolute naive uncorrupted youth brought the production to a new level. So, make sure you don’t miss “Spring Awakening.”
“Spring Awakening” is playing at the Monument National, 1182 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, Quebec
H2X 2S5. The production runs from Saturday June 8th to Saturday June 15th. 7:30-10:30 pm.
General admission $42.
