Spring awakening - Frank Wedekind

Frank Wedekind's Fruhlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) is perhaps the best known of this extraordinary playwright's works. Written in 1891, it aroused great controversy at the time, for its sexual outspokeness. With its scenes of pubescent angst, rape, and homosexuality, the play still has the power to shock. The themes it addresses and the sheer energy of the writing make the play startingly relevant today.This version by the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, was specially commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and was first performed in The Pit at The Barbican, London in 1995. In Ted Hughes's hands the dialogue has a particularly modern terseness and bite, drawing out all the erotic energy of the original.