BEN Kidd directs Frank Wedekind’s definitive play Spring Awakening in a new version by Anya Reiss, in a Nuffield coproduction with Headlong and West Yorkshire Playhouse in Southampton from next week.

Unnerving, entertaining, funny and dark, Wedekind’s definitive play about youth exploded onto the stage in 1906. In a society where we are constantly bombarded by overt messages and images, its provocative content of adolescent sexuality, suicide, abortion and rape has lost none of its provocative power.

Brought bang up to date, Reiss’s startlingly modern adaptation filters the restless urgency and erotic energy of the original and questions how young people are shaped for their future by a generation that doesn’t understand them.

  • Spring Awakening runs from Tuesday to Saturday April 5.