Spring Awakening
A happy surprise in musical theater, SPRING AWAKENING arrives on Broadway
from its success last season at The Atlantic Theater. Here’s a show that
has grown through experience. While the Off Broadway production was certainly
edgy, the Broadway version feels more grounded.
For one thing, Bill T. Jones gymnastic choreography is played down. Instead,
the focus is on the jutting movements of Melchior, the romantic lead whose
forceful moves translate quite literally in the love making scene.
It also seems only fitting, in this play about the sexual repression of youth,
that the roles of the elders have been replaced. Frank Woods’ twisted
version of an ugly, ruthless patriarch, teacher and minister is portrayed here
by Stephen Spinella. While he is more subtle in his approach to these roles,
Spinella’s intense realism makes the truth look harsher than we would
have imagined. As his counterpart, Christine Eastabrook portrays all of The
Adult Women. Her characterizations are rife with the tension between innocence
and malevolence.
But the really important characters here are the teenagers who cry out “like
in Latin this is so not it all”. Steven Sater’s lyrics at times
echo the young Bob Dylan and Duncan Sheik’s dreamy melodies bring to
mind the songs of Nora Jones. But here those light jazzy rhythms are infused
with the agony of these tortured youths. And it is through these ballads that
we hear their introspective thoughts. For instance, “The Dark I Know
Well” in which Martha confesses to being abused by her father and, of
course, “Mama Who Bore Me” with its soulful and ironic message
foreshadowing Wendla’s tragic destiny.
Clearly, the most dynamic songs here are in the hands of John Gallagher Jr.
as Moritz, the kid who just never gets to fit in. What a grinding rock quality
Gallagher brings to songs like “The Bitch of Living”. As
his best friend and the romantic lead Melchior, Jonathan Groff is handsome,
an apparently unsuspecting catalyst of the demise of others. And Lea Michele’s
Wendla brings darkness and mystery to the girl he loves.
While based on a 19th century drama, THE AWAKENING OF SPRING by Frank Wedekind,
this picture of repressive and hypocritical sexual mores holds all the shock
value of the original, censored in Germany more than 100 years ago.
That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.
