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Theater review
Spring Awakening
Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre. Book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Music by Duncan Sheik. Dir. Michael Mayer. With ensemble cast.
MYSTERIOUS SKIN Christy Altomare and Jake Epstein reach out and touch someone.The trouble with many “rock” musicals is their scores represent a musical-theater composer’s idea of what rock sounds like. Spring Awakening, about the tragic lusts of sheltered, hormonal teens (based on 19th-century playwright Frank Wedekind’s scandalous censor-bait), smartly avoids that dilemma by not using a musical-theater composer. No one would accuse mellow singer-songwriter Sheik of being too hardcore, but there’s clearly a pop-trained sensibility in his score that comes from outside the Tin Pan Alley–tinged Broadway tradition: Here there are chords, combinations and dissonances that we just don’t expect to hear in a conventional musical. The effect is thrilling.
Then again, Awakening isn’t exactly a conventional musical. These repressed Teutonic teens don’t break into song in continuity. Faced with feelings they can’t understand and cruel or dismissive adult authority figures, they sing at their moments of greatest frustration and confusion, expressing what they don’t know how to say. Then, as now, rock serves as teenagers’ proxy for rebellion.
The intentional disconnect between book scenes and songs—Sater’s lyrics shift into modern language as the actors pull out handheld mikes—might quell some audience members’ discomfort with musicals’ heightened form. But the panoply of dilemmas plucked from Wedekind’s work (masturbation, homosexuality, incest, abortion), and the bluntness with which Sater and director Mayer present them, prove a litmus test for our continuing prudishness regarding frank representations of teens and sex.
The terrific young touring cast gets it just right: For teenagers, whether in 1891 or 2009, all that yearning and churning does feel like life and death. Perhaps never before on stage has that feeling of roiling teen turmoil been better expressed than in the explosive second-act showstopper “Totally Fucked,” with Bill T. Jones’s jittery choreography perfectly capturing agitation and angst, while Kevin Adams’s lighting design rivals the MCA’s Olafur Eliasson show for the city’s best use of fluorescents. Simply put: It rocks.
Time Out Chicago / Issue 233 : Aug 13–19, 2009
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I absolutely fell in love with Spring Awakening and agree whole-heartedly with this rating. This is the type of show where things are not clear cut..so refreshingly honest and captures the feeling of being 14 again..but its sexual subject matter will split audiences. That's why it's so important for critics to lead the way and give daring works of art their due. Thank you for always doing a great job in highlighting the best that Chicago has to offer. I'm so glad I didn't miss this!
My wife loved this in NYC, so I think we'll try to see it again here. But. While I loved the songs, the book was totally Broadway-conventional. Also, I hated the neon lights. I kept wondering why it was supposed to look like a Saved by the Bell version of a rock club.
Hi Jason, the rating is five stars out of five. As you note, the sixth star (like a zero) was practically unattainable, which made it meaningless. That's why TOC's staff took a hard look at the rating system a few months back and revised to five stars. A key now runs in our table of contents every week: 5-Don't Miss,4-Excellent,3-Good,2-Fair,1-Poor,0-Avoid. A show (or book, album, art show etc) need not be a perfect masterpiece to reach five. Thanks for your comments.
Considering this is my favourite musical - or joint favourite with a couple of others, I don't have a problem with the star rating. That said, I saw the London production that was brilliantly sung and acted. Everything I read makes it sound like even the American broadway production wasn't that good, which is a shame. Regarding negative comments about the music, as a musician I don't understand that. Perhaps it's the style you don't like, but within the style the music was hugely impressive.
As for Spring Awakening, I was there on opening night having never seen or heard it before. The choreography and some performances were outstanding. The songs were unsatisfying; ending abruptly without musical heft. The actors were a mix of competent and sadly amateur; their voices ranging from good to terrible. The lead girl was awful. Despite the gripping source material, this musical ends with one of the most contrived and cheesy ghost montages ever seen. SIX PERFECT STARS? Please.
Seriously? Six stars? Up until very recently, this magazine rated shows pretty fairly. There were never zero or six star shows. A five star show was rare indeed, and actually meant something. Now there are shows getting zero stars (implying they are utterly worthless), and six stars (implying they are flawless). There is something very wrong and indulgent in this star system nowadays.