- 1892 building
- 1892 Germany clothing
- 1892 German town
- German Mail
- German Girl and German man
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sexual 'Awakening' puts teenagers' passions to pop music!
December 11, 2006 Monday
FINAL EDITION
Sexual 'Awakening' puts teenagers' passions to pop music
BYLINE: Elysa Gardner
SECTION: LIFE; Pg. 6D
LENGTH: 468 words
NEW YORK -- Beautiful, messy, exhilarating, awkward, vital: They're all adjectives you might use to describe first love. So it's fitting that you could also readily apply them to Spring Awakening (*** 1/2 out of four), the imperfect but transcendent new musical that opened Sunday at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.
Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's adaptation of German playwright Frank Wedekind's 1891 drama tracing the sexual and moral oppression of teenagers -- and its disastrous impact on budding thinkers and lovers -- arrives on Broadway after an acclaimed run at the Atlantic Theater Company. More than one critic compared it to Rent, a reference that would seem logical given Spring's focus on rebellious youth and Sheik's background as a pop singer/songwriter.
But Spring is at once a less polished and more resonant work. Where Rent creator Jonathan Larson both embraced the bombast of rock-era theater and aspired to a more conventional sophistication, Sheik approaches the stage with the fresh eyes and open mind of an artist accustomed to an entirely different tradition.
In doing so, Spring's composer manages to deliver lovely, graceful pop melodies that work in a theatrical context -- that is, to propel a story and elucidate its characters.
Sheik's score is actually a more authentic example of musical theater than the spectacle-driven scenery showcases and movie-based wink-fests currently lighting up Times Square. You would have to look to another recent off-Broadway transfer, Grey Gardens, or back to The Light in the Piazza to find its contemporary peer in sincerity and potency.
Spring is not without its own affectations, which can seem more glaring than they did in the cozier Atlantic venue. Director Michael Mayer's determination to fill a less intimate space can strain some of Sater's delicate, earnest dialogue. New cast member Christine Estabrook gives a few histrionic line readings in an assortment of adult female roles, while original principal John Gallagher Jr. can overreach as the tortured misfit Moritz.
Luckily, the romantic leads retain all their charm. Lea Michele oozes sweet vulnerability as Wendla, the doomed ingenue. As Melchior, her precocious suitor, Jonathan Groff wields an easy, irresistible intensity that made me wonder where this guy was when I was in high school.
The tender supporting cast is similarly appealing and convincing. There are a few hams in the bunch; but in the musical numbers -- where the characters shake off their 19th-century trappings to romp and stomp with post-punk dynamism -- we witness not the preening of Broadway babies but the exuberance of young performers yearning, like Wedekind's adolescents, for self-expression.
By reveling in that need, Spring Awakening offers a trip unlike any other you're likely to experience this season.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
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