Spring Awakening: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Cutie

If you visit the Eugene O'Neill Theatre these days longing for some vibrant melodies that propel lyrics full of wry humor and image-laden poetics, staging full of exhilarating pictures, and wildly frenetic choreography performed by exuberant young talent, then Spring Awakening should certainly satisfy your urges.  But if you take your seat hoping to enjoy that unique emotional surge that musical theatre ignites in a world where spoken dialogue accelerates into sung lyric you are, to quote one of the show's catchier numbers (the most blatant we-need-to-liven-up-a-dark-act-two showstopper since "Gee, Officer Krupke") totally fucked. 

Bookwriter/lyricist Steven Sater had a terrific idea, seeing the musical potential and the contemporary relevance in German playwright Frank Wedekind's frequently banned 1891 drama which dared suggest that perhaps if we taught adolescents about sex while they were going through puberty, they might be better equipped to handle the changes in their bodies and emotions with some degree of sanity and fewer cases of unwanted pregnancy.  Though I wouldn't suggest that all of those today who would limit the amount of sex education offered in our schools would be as close-minded and abusively dictatorial as the teachers and parents in both Wedekind's original and Sater's adaptation (Stephen Spinella and Christine Estabrook play all the adults with cartoonish indifference and ruthlessness), the frustration of feeling you're an unheard voice screaming for some recognition is certainly something to sing about. 

But composer Duncan Sheik, as explained in the cast recording's CD booklet, is not a fan of the integrated book musical.  Sater writes, "Duncan said that one thing he didn't like about musicals was that one minute the characters were talking, the next minute they're singing; and a moment later they're talking again.  All too often, he felt, those characters could just as easily be speaking the lyrics they were singing."  Sater's solution was to use the songs as "interior monologues" which would explore what was going on in each character's mind.  Though it's a technique famously used by Rodgers and Hammerstein, their twist would be that, although the piece was still set in 1891 Germany, the characters would regularly pull out microphones and internally express themselves through the music and lyrics of 2006 alternative rock.  (In the ensemble numbers they're apparently all thinking the same thing.)  The resulting score easily stands independently, as though it were a song cycle or a concept album inspired by Wedekind's play, but a theatregoer's enjoyment of Spring Awakening will most likely hinge on whether or not a score so universal in its expression can hold your attention as part of a two hour and fifteen minute long piece of story-telling.  Just as good theatre scores, minus their books, sometimes do not work well as albums, a good album, with songs that contribute little to forward the action, does not always hold up in a theatre as part of a play. 

Effective or not, the score benefits from some lovely singing, particularly that of Lea Michele as Wendla, a girl who is not only mystified by her newly blossoming body, but is still kept totally ignorant by her mother as to where babies come from.  Those who do know, like the sensitive intellectual Melchior (Jonathan Groff) and the neurotically obsessive Moritz (John Gallagher, Jr.), are having trouble keeping hormonally charged thoughts from sabotaging their ability to concentrate on schoolwork.  Their intertwining stories of self-discovery, combined with the stories of gay lovers Hanschen (Jonathan B. Wright) and Ernst (Gideon Glick), runaway Ilse (Lauren Pritchard) and parentally abused Martha (Lilli Cooper) involve abortion, suicide, masturbation, masochism… all the things, as they say in the theatre across the street, we hold near and dear to our hearts.  But despite such issues and despite the presence of language some may object to in a show whose primary audience would be teenagers, Sater and director Michael Mayer keep the proceedings from becoming distasteful or vulgar.  Sweetness permeates the piece, particularly in its one depiction of sexual intercourse (the brief partial nudity would be barely noticeable from most seats), which is touchingly played by Michele and Groff for innocence, curiosity and the wonder of discovery. 

It wouldn't be surprising to see a few hit songs come out of Spring Awakening's score; certainly for its contemporary sound and the quality of the material, but also because, unlike most modern musicals, the show's structure allows Sater to write lyrics that aren't completely tied to the characters and situations.  In a sense, Spring Awakening echoes the typical musical of the 1920's and 30's when Cole Porter, the Gershwins and the like wrote shows as vehicles to carry songs that were only loosely integrated into their plots, giving them a greater chance for radio play and record sales.  When the strong book musical with an integrated score became more popular, the potential for hit songs decreased.  ("Lonely Room" and "Vanilla Ice Cream" are great songs, but they're not the type that gets radio play.) 

I was especially taken with "My Junk," a clever and peppy acceptance of unrequited crushes ("We've all got our junk, and my junk is you.") and the fatalistic humor of "The Bitch Of Living" and the aforementioned "Totally Fucked."  But the immediacy and natural theatrics of these spirited numbers (especially when enhanced by Bill T. Jones' showstopping choreography that resembles the kind of moves kids might improvise while dancing around their bedrooms) isn't carried over into the rest of the reflective and ballad-heavy score that keeps halting the narrative's momentum, making Spring Awakening visually and aurally exciting, but keeping its characters empathetcally distant.  Perhaps Sater was thinking of how sensitive, poetic adolescents might express themselves in private journals when he penned "The Song of Purple Summer" and "The Mirror-Blue Night" (I'm at home with a ghost, who got left in the cold / Who knocks at my peace, with no keys to my soul.), but clarity is a virtue in musical theatre, where you can't play a track over again to decipher the meaning.  I can overlook his frequent use of sound-alikes instead of pure rhymes, since it's a common practice in rock.

But any emotional holes in Spring Awakening are neatly patched by Mayer's beautifully abstract staging and Kevin Adams' shadowy-textured lighting for the book scenes which can quickly burst into neon-blazing concert hall glory, where Brian Ronan's sound design is impeccably clear.  Oddly enough, it's the sharp difference between the reality of life and the rock star fantasy world that gives Spring Awakening an old-fashioned "break into song" feel.  And though it's rather cute at first when the characters start popping microphones out of their costumes, the routine is inappropriately funny during moments of tenderness and starts seriously undercutting the darker moments of the second act. 

If you apply the old adage that hummable tunes equals a hit musical, then Spring Awakening is in for a healthy run.  But if you leave the O'Neill with a song in your head instead of your heart, it could be because there's more excitement in Mayer's production and the novelty of having a contemporary rock concert alternating with an adaptation of a hundred year old play than there is in this telling of Wendla, Melchoir and Moritz's search for answers during a time of life they're not prepared to understand. 

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Jonathan Groff, Skylar Astin and John Gallagher, Jr.

Bottom:  Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff