Following last year’s smash hit production of 1984, theatre company Headlong return with a radical new version of Frank Wedekind’s ‘children’s tragedy’ Spring Awakening. Unnerving, entertaining, funny and dark, the definitive play about youth comes to the Liverpool Playhouse from Tuesday 13th to Saturday 17th May.

In a society where we are constantly bombarded by overt messages and images, writer Anya Reiss has created a startlingly modern adaptation which sharply evokes the sexual precociousness and confused raw tension of teenage life today.

Spring Awakening caused riots when it exploded onto the stage in 1906 and has lost none of its provocative power. Brought bang up-to-date by Headlong, this fresh new version examines the exuberance, intensity and confusion of adolescence today, asking important questions about how young people are shaped for their future by a generation that doesn’t understand them.

Anya Reiss said, “It was about teenagers being gay, getting pregnant, crumbling under exam pressure, beating each other, killing themselves and above all being lied to by adults. Somehow it all remains true, looking at my list of what the play is about, we can’t pretend that any of that doesn’t still happen. It’s all sex and death really.”

Anya Reiss is winner of both the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Most Promising Playwright, and her plays include The Seagull (Southwark Playhouse), Forty-Five Minutes (National Theatre Connections), and Spur of the Moment (Royal Court).

Director Ben Kidd was the winner of the 2012 Genesis Future Directors Award at the Young Vic, and is also co-founder of Dublin-based Dead Centre. His directing includes The Shawl (Young Vic), Anne and Zef (Salisbury Playhouse), and Richard III (Riverside Studios).

The ensemble cast is Aoife Duffin, Claudia Grant, Bradley Hall, Oliver Johnstone, Ekow Quartey, Ruby Thomas, Adam Welsh and Daisy Whalley.

Tickets for Spring Awakenings are priced at £10 to £23. Tickets are available from the Box office, by telephone on 0151 7094776 or online at www.everymanplayhouse.com.