Uncensored 'Spring' comes to Philly

For a classic theater company, EgoPo's coming-out production in Philadelphia is surprisingly avant-garde.

"Spring Awakening," which opened at the Adrienne Theater Friday, displays the sometimes lurid, often humorous angst of German adolescents during the repressive and prudish Victorian era.

The play, written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind, was scandalous for its time and rarely produced because of its graphic subject matter - masturbation, gay intimacy, rape and a suicide. EgoPo's production is the first professional, uncensored staging of the play in Philadelphia.

"Spring Awakening" is a heady reminder of a time in life when one has "one foot in adolescence and the other in adulthood," said artistic director Lane Savadove.

EgoPo has been around for 15 years, including almost a decade in New Orleans where they built The Jewel Theater. But Hurricane Katrina ravaged the company's building, sets and costumes.

The troupe members were safe, though, because they were in Philadelphia participating in the Fringe Festival. The support they received here during the dark days after Katrina persuaded Savadove, a Bucks County native, to move EgoPo to his home turf.

"It's been a year and a half in the making. It's a long journey from rebuilding this company from scratch," said Savadove.

It was a journey made easier thanks to the receptiveness of Philadelphia's theater community.

"Philadelphia is known as being most supportive of theater arts and I find it completely true. Theater, as a rule, comes with backstabbing, but we haven't experienced that here," said Savadove.

EgoPo, derived from the French phrase "the physical self," describes the troupe's acting style. Rather than merely focusing on dialog, it emphasizes how characters relate spatially on stage.

"We became more physically aware of ourselves," said Robert DaPonte, 27, who plays the brainy rebel Melchior Gabor in "Spring Awakening."

"It's a way of focusing the tension on stage. You can pinpoint the energy. And that's what theater comes down to: two people on stage."

Some stylistic elements distinguish EgoPo's production. For example, artificial wildflowers adorn every inch of the stage floor and spill out of set windows, creating an intimate atmosphere for the play, which is primarily set in the woods.

Also, to juxtapose the naivete of the adolescents and the decadence of the authority figures (and a clever way to disguise actors playing multiple roles), the latter are portrayed in grotesque, papier-mache masks.

A musical version of "Spring Awakening" is a current hit on Broadway, but shouldn't be confused with this dramatic version. The two, Savadove warned, are emotively different.

"It's amazing to see it in full dramatic form. It's an amazingly complex story. A musical can't show all that," he said.

The Broadway buzz certainly can't hurt, though. "It's exciting to do this play during its success on Broadway," Savadove said. "It's my favorite play ever written. Period."*

Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 8 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, 2 p.m. matinee Saturday, through March 25, $28, students and seniors $25. Info: www.egopo.org.