Spring Awakening entertains, doesn’t rock

By Sam Fran Scavuzzo
Collegian Editor
October 17, 2007

Can a play be both exceedingly relevant but agonizingly annoying the same time? Billed as a musical “that changes everything” and possessing a score which is “ravishingly rock,” Spring Awakening is as revolutionary as A Tale of Two Cities but as rock ‘n’ roll as Fall Out Boy.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Richards Associates-Jonathan Groff (Melchior) and John Gallagher Jr.
(Moritz) carry the weight of Spring Awakening well.

And the last time I checked, Fred Flintstone rocked harder, and that’s not too hard.

Playing now at the Eugene O’Neal Theatre on W. 49th Street and Broadway in New York, Spring Awakening has an awesome storyline that discusses nearly all of sexuality’s taboos, as they affect a 19th-century German town.

Critics love this play, it seems, even more than Rent or Avenue Q. Cleaning up at the 2007 Tony Awards (winning 11, including Best Musical, Best Direction in a Musical and Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, among others), Spring Awakening opened its second Broadway run Sept. 30.

The title of the piece reflects the discovery and suffocation of sexuality for young men and women by the established prudes. Challenging sanctioned education, the sanctified church and the sanctuary which could be a home, protagonist Melchior Gabor (Jonathan Groff) is a German James Dean— except this rebel has a cause.

Melchior has an open mind and a big heart. Is he too sexdriven? Not more than most other teens are. This adolescent is brilliant though. As the play opens, Melchior is depicted as a top-notch student with a disposition the authorities love to hate. Sadly, as the story evolves everything he is involved with meets some sort of tragedy. Suicides, abortions and abusive parents pervade the landscape of his life. The challenge presented to him at the climax of the play is whether to fall like Hamlet or take the terrible lemons he was given and make lemonade.

Although I appreciated the plot’s political aim—to question society’s rigid outlook on sexuality and the youth—the play would be nowhere without the superb interaction between the characters. Most of the actors in Spring Awakening’s first run were new to Broadway, and almost the entire cast returned for the second one.

Besides Melchior, his best friend Moritz steals the show. Played by John Gallagher, Jr.—who won the aforementioned Tony—Moritz is a nervous nellie, driven crazy by the lure of women and the desire to please his father as a man and a student. Even though he is a character we’ve seen before (much like the title character in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther or, more recently, Neil Perry in Dead Poet’s Society), Moritz commands the stage every time he is present and sings genuinely painful songs. “And Then There Were None,” “Don’t Do Sadness” and the sassy “The Bitch of Living” are all numbers that stay with you long after their performance.

Other good characters include Melchior’s love interest Wendla (Lea Michele), the recently homosexual and deviously boy-charged Hanschen (Jonathan B. Wright) and the sultry, yet deeply moving, Martha (Lilli Cooper). Her featured song about being sexually abused by her father, “The Darkness I Know So Well,” causes shudders and tears.

Additional cool elements include: A very minimalist set that contains illuminated set pieces on the back wall, which light up when something symbolic happens; seating on the stage itself, which allows for an intimate, black box theater feel; and the fact that all adult characters are played by one male and one female, emphasizing the idea of a society of faceless drones.

When it comes to the songs, I liked them. I swear I did.

However, it wasn’t the songs themselves that bothered me, but the presentation of them. First, the performers all used hand microphones. I don’t criticize this move because it breaks standard Broadway tradition; I slam it because it’s really lame.

To me, the hand mics were supposed to give the performance a more rock ‘n’ roll feel, which leads to my ultimate critique. This idea was a noble attempt but a terrible failure in my mind. Pete Townshend-style guitar swings, performers wildly jumping around and singers gripping and groping mic stands seemed choreographed. I feel the essence of rock ‘n’ roll is the pure, original, un-rehearsed energy which comes from the music.

A perfect example of why this play is canned can be seen in the song “Totally F---ed.” With lyrics like “Yeah, you’re f---ed all right/and all for spite/You can kiss your sorry ass goodbye,” I felt like I was listening to a very forced Something Corporate song (actually, at one point I was almost positive Andrew McMahon—SoCo’s lead singer—was in the play). The staging of the number particularly irked me as well, because the entire cast runs around extending its middle fingers and yelling “Totally f----ed!” The members use the f-word as a 12-year-old does, trivializing its power. Moritz in “And Then There Were None” uses it much more effectively.

The nature of a Broadway musical is everything rock music—or even pop rock music—is attempting to rebel against. I just didn’t buy into what Spring Awakening was trying to sell me.

After leaving the historic and packed-like-a-sardine-can theater, I felt entertained, challenged and angry. My anger, though, wasn’t directed at a society which suffocates its youth, but instead at the playwrights for totally missing what rock ‘n’ roll is about.

If you like Broadway musicals, you’ll like Spring Awakening. If you like rock bands that are not Panic! at the Disco, Simple Plan and All-American Rejects, you won’t.

scavuzzos1@lasalle.edu