The teens are alright. They are horny, curious and yearning for intimacy and connection. It’s a shame that the conservative world of adults is ill-equipped to help shepherd them into adulthood.
Adapted and directed by Soulpepper’s new Artistic Director Paolo Santalucia, Spring Awakening is a bold season opener for the company. It’s a dark coming-of-age story written in 1891 by German dramatist Frank Wedekind.
It’s got a fascinating history, often being censored because of the themes of puberty, sex, homosexuality, death and abuse. It’s also been celebrated by famous anarchist Emma Goldman for its unsanitized examination of adolescence in a conservative culture.
The story follows a group of teenagers on the precipice of adulthood, struggling with school pressures while beginning to experience adult desires with little guidance or education. As the boys near the end of their school year, Moritz (played by Jake Cohen) is fighting to pass his classes. His best friend Melchior (Jake Bunyan) is effortlessly smart and more worldly in his understanding of sex.
As Melchior and Moritz, the two Jakes have a great homoerotic tension, adding to the complexity of friendship and intimacy between boys.
The girls imagine what life is like as mothers and wives, all wanting to break from the unhealthy patterns of their parents. Ina (Raylene Harwood) shares that her father regularly abuses her, and delivers a heartbreaking monologue about wanting to let her kids grow like weeds, saving them from a life of being cut back like roses.
In an effort to understand Ina, Wendla (Olivia Neary-Hatton) finds herself dabbling in some unintentional BDSM. Her mother (Liisa Repo-Martel) refuses to tell her anything more about babies than that “the stork visits.” Neary-Hatton’s frustration is childlike without veering into childish territory.
Diego Matamoros, a founding member of Soulpepper, is the sadistic professor who torments the boys. The old guard actor badgering aclass composed of largely new Soulpepper Academy performers was as much an amusing easter egg for longtime patrons as ideal casting.
Shannon Lea Doyle’s set is expansive and naturalistic. The choice to have the kids running on the grass rather than a typical black stage covered in spike marks heightens the sense of distance between the innocence of childhood and the artifice of the confusing adult world. The sound and lighting design by Thomas Ryder Payne and Kevin Lamotte also leans into the naturalistic. Weather and darkness metaphorically contains the characters’ lives, leaving everyone vulnerable to the elements.
The story is as bleak as it is beautiful. Suddenly faced with sex, death and violence, the teens try to make sense of it all, enjoy their fleeting childhood, and embrace their changing bodies and emotional needs in a cold, oppressive world.
Though written in the late 19th century, in many ways, it could have been written today. Adolescence was confusing then as it is now, and will continue to be so long as we exist. Through the lives of adolescents, Wedekind offers a cautionary tale about how repressive and conservative forces snuff out growth.
This article appeared in the 2026 Oct/Nov issue.
