Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow
Four stars
The facts of life come fast and hard in Andrew Panton’s
expansive rendering of writer Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik’s 2006 musical
reimagining of Frank Wedekind’s nineteenth century template for angst-ridden
teen TV. As classroom radical Melchoir Gabor, his first love Wendla and the
rest of the gang come of age with all the pains that go with it, a
frighteningly familiar set of psychological scars are exposed. Sexual abuse,
suicide and under-age pregnancy are all in the mix, brought to flesh and blood
life by a mighty cast of 18 musical theatre students, with Ann Louise Ross and
Barrie Hunter from Dundee Rep’s ensemble company playing assorted grown-ups with
grotesque relish.
Played out on designer Kenneth MacLeod’s
testosterone-charged gym hall set, when actors aren’t in a scene, they either
sit on benches in single-sex rows like they’re at a school disco or else drape
themselves across vaulting horses and desks as they lustily spy on every
illicit liaison.
While the entire ensemble gives it their all vocally
and physically throughout a series of beautifully choreographed scenarios,
there are stand-outs from Max Alexander-Taylor as Melchoir Gabor, Sarah
Michelle Kelly as Wendla and Ross Baxter as the troubled Moritz. The score,
played under musical director Robert Wilkinson’s guidance by a string-led six-piece
band of music students, at times possesses the breathless baroque gallop of the
Arcade Fire.
Combining his roles as artistic director of Dundee Rep
and head of musical theatre at the RCS for this co-production between the two
institutions, director Andrew Panton has created a rites of passage to
remember. As the entire cast look out during the show’s final moments, their innocence
transformed into bittersweet experience, it’s as if they’re climbing ever higher,
ready at last to take the leap for life itself.
The Herald, March 16th 2018
ends
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