Impressionable youths were portrayed engaging in strictly adult behaviour in Richard Jones's version of this controversial' play: smoking. And not simulated stuff with talcum powder being puffed from stage fags, either - this was the real deal, with full-frontal glowing cigarette ends. It's not difficult to see why Frank Wedekind's play not only shocked audiences a century ago (it was written in 1891 and first performed in 1906), but for decades afterwards: the tale of adolescent yearnings and rites of passage features group masturbation, a gay kiss and teenage suicide. Even in the 1980s, a version featuring real teenagers rather than adults raised hackles among normally laid-back Canadian theatregoers.

This student production was bright and colourful, reflecting the themes of passion and fertility: five trees stretched almost to the ceiling, the tallest brushing the lights overhead with its lime green foliage; red beams cast a glow as the conversation throbbed with lust and resentment. A gravestone in the corner served as a vanitas', a reminder that death lurks nearby; railings descended during the scenes set in school as a symbol of repression, and window frames dangled in mid-air during the domestic sequences, turning the stage into a Magritte-style surrealist painting.

This latter feature was important, as Wedekind's drama was more an exploration of the subconscious than a coherent narrative. Despite the quality of the performances, neither the cast nor the director was able to overcome the artificial constructs: the characters are childlike - only one, Melchior (a confident Tom Palmer), has learned the facts of life' by the age of 14. The others, particularly the highly-strung Moritz (Sam Caird) are excited, but frustrated, by puberty. However, the lads appeared unrealistically articulate and philosophical, while nearly all the young females remained twee and infantile. The girls, especially Anna Popplewell (pictured with Tom Palmer) as the hapless Wendla, but also Charlotte Norris as the bubbly Thea and Lizzie Davidson as pathetic, bullied Martha, were compelling to watch.

Melchior was the catalyst for change - an atheist who writes his best friend Moritz an essay about sexual intercourse, which gets him expelled from school. He ends up sexually initiating Wendla and being sent to a reformatory. Much of Spring Awakening deals not with lust but the presence of death; starkly so during the eerie, existential finale. The performances were robust and enjoyable, even if the authoritarian figures who pronounced judgment on youth were sent up in camp fashion, the ghost of Frank "ooh Betty" Spencer stalking the stage at one point.