Spring Awakening

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Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, photo by Joan Marcus

So, why all the fuss about Spring Awakening, probably the best-reviewed musical of 2006?

It’s all about hope for the future of Broadway. Spring Awakening is not going to save the musical single-handed, but if you were to sit down and list the elements that point to tomorrow’s worthwhile musical theater, you’d be listing everything that’s great about this show.

Story

There is no older or more powerful story than this one, because it’s a story we all live. Spring Awakening, based on a play by German author Frank Wedekind, tells about a boy and a girl who find each other as their hormones surge. She becomes pregnant and dies mid-abortion. His best friend is hounded to death for being different and curious.

No less astute a critic of society than Emma Goldman said of dramatist Wedekind, “FRANK WEDEKIND is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany… More boldly than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies.”

Thinking about this show, Romeo and Juliet come to mind, of course. But Wedekind has dispensed with Montagues and Capulets. Sex and life itself, as owned by the young, are one clan; repressive society – every grownup – is the other clan. And that clan is evil and wrong about everything.

Spring Awakening is the story of our bodies changing, of first arousal, of the first time we notice the opposite (or same) sex, and it’s all imbued with intoxication and terror, just like we remember it. It’s a story where everything is at stake.

Music

What’s the difference between a great pop song, and the songs that make up a great pop score for a musical?

For one thing, a great pop song tells a whole story; maybe it creates a self-contained world. A great musical score exists in service to the story. Each song needs to stand out, but not too much.

There are hit-like pop songs in this show that provide immense pleasure. “My Junk,” “The Bitch of Living,” and “Totally Fucked” could all be pop hits, although that last one wouldn’t get much radio airplay. The show’s anthem, “I Believe” carries echoes of “Rent” and Laura Nyro’s hits for the Fifth Dimension, like “Stoned Soul Picnic” or maybe it’s the Dimension’s rendering of “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In” that’s brought to mind, and cements the show’s lineage back to “Hair.”

But here’s the thing. Nearly every time an actor opens his or her mouth to sing, melodies and harmonies capture the ineffable feeling of being on the brink of sexual maturity. That’s a neat trick.

Cast

Jonathan Groff is Melchior, with a voice clear and pure, and a heart to match. Lea Michele is Wendla, the young woman we first meet begging her mother to impart the facts of life before it’s too late. It’s hard to avoid clichés when talking about these two actors. Fresh faced, innocent, energetic and persuasive, without being cloying, they drive the story forward to its inevitable tragedy.

Choreography

Gesture and dance are embedded into this show from the first seconds to the frenzied climax. How often do you go the theatre and feel like you’re participating in the creation of a new language of movement?

That’s the feeling of watching the choreography by Bill T. Jones and seeing the gestures of these boys and girls as their bodies sprout and their first tentative self-caresses become an inward and outward manifestation of who they are. By the second act, each of the young performers dances the streaking hormones and dripping juices besieging their morphing bodies. If there’s one too many cute Teen Beat jumps in the air by the guys, so be it.

Youth appeal

An adult musical that talks openly, directly, scandalously to 13 year olds – that’s a miracle, and even more so because the live theater, not being mass entertainment, doesn’t need to protect young people from their own lives, hormones, and bodies, as television and film do.

A father sitting next to me with two daughters in their mid-teens, refused to rise to their bait. After the simulated sex, the bared breast, the pantomimed masturbation, they asked dad – “Were you uncomfortable in the theater with us?” “Why?” he replied, and meant it. I think he was glad for all the conversations this show will start.

This is the kind of show that will draw young people to see it more than once – and whether it’s in an onstage seat for $38.50 ($31.50 online), or something in the back of the house at half price for $20. Kids will leave this show muttering, “I want to do that” (make theater, and make love) and they will.

And, OK, so lots of shows these days probably have MySpace pages and Facebook friends, but this one seems to earn the right to hang with teens in their own universe. And if you’re 13 or 31 you have to think that’s great.

Appeal to the rest of the Broadway demographic

For the older Broadway crowd, the ones who have the $250 per couple for orchestra seats, the show is still a viable commodity. When a 60-ish couple passed by talking about how they liked the show, but didn’t “get” all of it, it was good enough. They don’t hear fast enough to get all the lyrics. No doubt, they might miss some of the allusions to young sex, masturbation, and other activities that they were more likely engaged in 50 years earlier, but the reviews, and the insistence of the critics that this is the next big thing help make it so…