Spring Awakening at Soulpepper marks an audacious start to the company’s Santalucia era

Open this photo in gallery:

• Title: Spring Awakening
• Adapted by: Paolo Santalucia, based on the play by Frank Wedekind
• Directed by: Paolo Santalucia
• Actors: Jake Bunyan, Jake Cohen, Olivia Neary-Hatton, Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu, Liisa Repo-Martell, Raquel Duffy, Diego Matamoros, Daren A. Herbert
• Company: Soulpepper Theatre
• Venue: Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs until Oct. 18

In more ways than one, it’s spring at Soulpepper Theatre. Artistic director Paolo Santalucia, hired a year ago, is finally at the helm of a season he curated himself. Printed programs, all but extinct at most Toronto theatres, are back in the Distillery District’s newly rebranded “civic theatre,” and packed with behind-the-scenes context for curious readers.

Even the company’s lobby has been misted with the springtime dew of an impressive marketing overhaul: The space feels newly inviting, its walls lined with funky illustrations in eye-catching colours. There’s a sense when you walk through the door that under Santalucia’s management, the venue is sprouting anew.

It ought to come as no surprise, then, that Santalucia’s first production in the company’s top job – Spring Awakening, adapted and directed by himself – is audacious and sharp. With a cast of 15 and a three-hour runtime, the piece is enormous in ways that punch well above the old Soulpepper’s weight. At its best, it feels like a revelation.

Open this photo in gallery:

But there are cracks in the production. Santalucia’s three-act script is hugely affecting but bloated in places; his young cast deals equally in nuance and shoutiness.

The staging, however, ranks among Santalucia’s most thoughtful: His decision to frame the Baillie Theatre with a black proscenium brings a filmic elegance to the space that pairs beautifully with the coarseness of Spring Awakening’s story.

Of note: The Spring Awakening playing at Soulpepper is not Steven Sater and the late Duncan Sheik’s 2006 rock musical. (Condolences to the several audience members on Saturday night who purchased tickets believing otherwise; kudos to the ones who stuck it out anyway.)

Instead, the text is a new adaptation of German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play. Santalucia’s script largely leaves the 19th-century setting intact, but more than once, the sexually repressed teens of provincial Germany speak directly to us. They address the audience directly in contemporary language; as dressed by costume designer Ming Wong, they wear school uniforms and dresses not so far off from the cottagecore, trad-wife approved fashions of today.

Open this photo in gallery:

That’s not to say Santalucia’s production goes overboard in drawing parallels between the sexual prudishness of the 1890s and the culture wars of modern society: For the most part, he shows restraint in this area, allowing banned-book and abstinence-only resonances to echo off the stage.

When we first meet 15-year-old Wendla Bergman (Olivia Neary-Hatton, a luminous new face on the Toronto scene), she’s wrestling into a dress that doesn’t quite fit anymore. Wendla is “filling out,” according to her mother (Liisa Repo-Martell), and needs to start wearing longer gowns. When the pink-cheeked Wendla asks what that means – and why it matters – her mother babbles, refusing to explain how her daughter’s changing body might correlate with the facts of life.

Meanwhile, Melchior Gabor (Jake Bunyan) and Moritz Stiefel (Jake Cohen) are running Latin drills at school, supervised by the ever-frightening Professor Knochenbrüch (Diego Matamoros) as they recite conjugations and tenses. Matamoros, flicking a whip as he walks, towers over the boys, invoking twin fears of God and lashings as he speaks.

Indeed, Spring Awakening unfurls in a community where none but God can dictate the behaviours and desires of its citizens. When Wendla begs Melchior to beat her with a stick, so that she can understand the feeling of true powerlessness, there’s an existential heft to the moment that far exceeds schoolyard naïveté. From their first conversation, it’s rather obvious that the youngsters will be punished for the sins of their parents, and specifically their elders’ refusal to explain where babies come from.

Open this photo in gallery:

Wendla and Melchior’s friends, simultaneously, are knee-deep in awakenings of their own, from burgeoning longings for their friends from school (Noah Beemer in particular is excellent as the tormented Hansy Rilow) to pervasive thoughts of suicide. When Wendla hears of the beatings that Martha (Jasmine Case) has endured from her parents, the shock is evident on Neary-Hatton’s rosy cheeks: In this world, you’re either a victim of immense cruelty or completely insulated from it. Neither, as we soon learn, is a safe means of entering adulthood.

The tenderness with which Santalucia approaches the problems of young people is palpable and warm: Scenes between teens are allowed to extend far past quick introductions of plot, resulting in rich chunks of dialogue for the cast to chew. Melchior, in particular, is refreshingly complicated as written, with incongruous flaws and desires that tug the boy in impossible directions.

But Santalucia’s adaptation also feels overwhelmingly male in places, its lens focused more squarely on Spring Awakening’s young men than its women. (It’s telling that the musical Spring Awakening opens with a group number from the girls about their puritanical inheritance; Santalucia’s starts in the midst of Matamoros’s gruelling Latin exam.)

Open this photo in gallery:

A few production elements, too, chafe with the play’s broader sense of panache: Daren A. Herbert’s British and German accents are misplaced as the school’s headmaster and the town doctor, and create pacing issues when wrenching scenes unexpectedly (and inappropriately) turn funny.

And while much of Santalucia’s cast offers succulent textwork and highly considered physical performances – Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu is particularly compelling as the wayward Ilse – the ensemble occasionally lets the play’s brutal stakes overwhelm its characters’ inner journeys. Crying is never a whimper but an ear-splitting wail; arguments unfold at one very high level, without moments of quietness for the story to breathe.

Even with quibbles – and despite Spring Awakening’s extraordinary high points, those cavils are significant – the production marks a bold new era for Soulpepper. Thomas Ryder Payne’s guitar-forward sound design adds youthful punkiness to a heartrending story of fighting the man; Kevin Lamotte’s shadowy lighting plots make Spring Awakening at times feel almost like a concert or rally.

One thing is for sure: It’s a new dawn at Soulpepper Theatre. And while Spring Awakening may not have worked for me as well as I’d hoped, it’s clear that Santalucia’s only just begun to bloom.