Spring Awakening: The Bitch of Aging

"Spring Awakening"

Book and lyrics by Steven Sater; music by Duncan Sheik; based on the play by Frank Wedekind; directed by Michael Mayer; choreography, Bill T. Jones; music supervisor, Kimberly Grigsby; scenic design, Christine Jones; costume design, Susan Hilferty; lighting design, Kevin Adams; sound design, Brian Ronan; orchestrations, Duncan Sheik; vocal arrangements, AnnMarie Milazzo; string orchestrations, Simon Hale; music coordinator, Michael Keller; fight direction, J. David Brimmer; music director, Jared Stein

Performances: Presented now through May 24 by Lexus Boston Area Dealers Broadway Across America-Boston Series at the Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass.

Tickets: Ticketmaster at 800-982-2787, BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com or at the theater box office Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Cast in order of appearance:

Wendla, Christy Altomare; The Adult Women, Angela Reed; Martha, Sarah Hunt; Ilse, Steffi D; Anna, Gabrielle Garza; Thea, Kimiko Glenn; The Adult Men, Henry Stram; Otto, Anthony Lee Medina; Hanschen, Andy Mientus; Ernst, Ben Moss; Georg, Matt Shingledecker; Moritz, Blake Bashoff; Melchior, Kyle Riabko; Ensemble, Julie Benko, Perry Sherman, Claire Sparks, Lucas A. Wells

It's official. I'm old. Despite excellent performances and inspired staging, particularly by innovative choreographer Bill T. Jones, Spring Awakening, the Tony Award-winning musical currently playing at Boston's Colonial Theatre through May 24, didn't move me. With all its raw pubescent angst and melodramatic sexual posturing, the show still left me emotionally cold. I guess as a person closer to menopause than the onset of menstruation, I simply couldn't relate.

Not that I ever could. My particular teen obsessions fixated on academics and tennis matches, not the laundry list of sexual concerns and aberrations that drive the thin plot derived from Frank Wedekind's groundbreaking 19^th century play of the same name. Child sexual abuse, check. Physical abuse, check. Wet dreams, check. Masturbation (lots of it), check. Sado-masochism, check. Nudity, check. Homosexuality, check. Losing one's virginity, check. Teen pregnancy, check. Abortion, check. Suicide, check. The notion that teens are inherently good and adults are inherently bad, check.

Spring Awakening: The Musical (not to be confused with the recent Zeitgeist Theatre production of Spring Awakening the play that just ended a well-received Boston run) tries so hard to make an "important" intellectual impact that it sacrifices sustained storytelling for episodic point making. Not that there aren't moments of great theatricality to be savored in this much touted touring production. There are. But the credit for engaging The Audience empathetically in the characters' alternating pain and tenderness goes to the choreographer and exceptionally committed cast, not the writers Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik. If it weren't for the tremendously expressive physical and vocal interpretations delivered by a stunningly talented group of young actors, the inner conflicts that torment the show's repressed private school boys and girls on the brink of adulthood would be lost in a haze of obscure lyrics and repetitive musical phrases. Michael Mayer's bold direction, Bill T. Jones' anguished choreography, and the cast's uniformly uninhibited performances make Spring Awakening stronger than it really is.

Set in a provincial German town in the 1890s, the musical successfully moves between period realism for the book scenes and contemporary pop/rock idioms for the fantasy sequences. Stylized, synchronized movements that suggest the rigid, robot-like conformity imposed by Puritanical (and for the most part cartoonish and unsympathetic) adults suddenly give way to tempestuous musical outbreaks that give physical life to the students' rebellious inner thoughts and feelings - concerns and daydreams that are often laced with significant amounts of anxiety and guilt. While anachronistic, the concert-like staging in which the teens sing into cordless microphones unsheathed from Victorian garments works powerfully to convey the timelessness and universality of the show's central issues. So too does the inclusion of The Audience via on-stage seating. When during the final musical number ensemble members dressed in modern-day clothing emerge from the group of youthful patrons assembled on gym-like bleachers, past and present unite in a symbolic expression of optimism for the future.

While clever, thought-provoking and often visually stirring, Spring Awakening nonetheless lapses at precisely the times when it ought to be its most gripping. What should be gut-wrenching elements - abuse, abortion and suicide - receive the same cursory treatment as the lighter scenes involving secretive self-satisfaction and homo-erotic experimentation. Emotional through-lines for the most part fail to deepen, rendering our connections to the characters unfulfilling. As a result, the intellectual and philosophically inclined hero Melchior (Kyle Riabko) tends to come across as a sermonizing revolutionary despite his tenderness toward and remorse over his relationship with Wendla. She (Christy Altomare) also becomes more of a symbol than a singularly tragic heroine, her most important moment of suffering and loss happening in the blink of an eye amidst a swirl of jarring, unintentionally upbeat colored lights. Only Moritz (Blake Bashoff), the guilt-ridden misfit student struggling desperately to fulfill his father's expectations despite his limited academic abilities, resonates as a fully fleshed, vulnerable human figure. His pain - transmuted into sadness, self-loathing and writhing bursts of anger - is truly moving and palpable.

The cast is uniformly strong and appealing, their voices alternately belting and caressing songs that range from pleading (Mama Who Bore Me), to explosive (The Bitch of Living), to haunting (Those You've Known), to poetic (The Song of Purple Summer). In delivering Sheik's often stirring but sometimes same-sounding music, they, as well as the very tight seven-piece orchestra, bring a richness of interpretation that is clear and penetrating. The cast even manages to invest Sater's awkwardly abstract and emotionally distancing lyrics with an understanding that transcends the obscurity. Performances across the board are focused and consistent, even when the material is not.

Spring Awakening has most certainly struck a major chord with audiences, particularly those who are still young enough to remember and/or share the turbulent thoughts and feelings that occupy adolescent hearts and minds. For that the creators should be roundly applauded. They have broken with conventional musical theater idioms to attract a new generation of theater goers - and they have done it with an intelligent, thought-provoking, sincere adaptation of a play that challenges rather than panders.

As such, there is much to be appreciated in Spring Awakening. If only the book and score had allowed this fine cast to delve more deeply into the lives of its main characters instead of forcing them to skim disconnectedly along the surface of what could have been complex themes. A less doggedly faithful adaptation of the original play might have resulted in a truly stunning and profoundly emotional musical for people of all ages.

PHOTOS BY Paul Kolnik: Anthony Lee Medina, Andy Mientus, Matt Shingledecker, Kyle Riabko, Blake Bashoff, and Ben Moss; Blake Bashoff as Moritz; Christy Altomare as Wendla and Kyle Riabko as Melchior

 

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