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Spring Awakening
Jul. 15th, 2009 05:30 amI went to see Spring Awakening at the Kennedy Center last night. This won the 2007 Tony for best musical and I suspect future generations will see that as a travesty. The story, which revolves around a group of sheltered German teenagers in the 1890's coming to terms with their sexuality, is interesting enough. But I could have lived without the deliberate attempts to be shocking and the insipid lyrics ("O, you're gonna be wounded/ o, I'm gonna be your wound"). There are some moments of musical power, typically when the score revs up to amplified rock songs (e.g. "Don't Do Sadness" and "Totally Fucked") but that's a pretty cheap trick to indicate emotional intensity. By the way, the latter is probably the best song, but there's not a lot to choose from.
The gimmick of having just two actors (one male, one female) play all the adults was a fairly effective way of reminding the audience that it's the perspective of the teenagers we're seeing. But it was hard to have any sense of how old these children are supposed to be, with their mixture of naivete and worldliness.
As for the performances, most were fine, but I thought Steffi D (as Ilse) was a bit weak vocally. The scene stealer was Andy Mientus as Hanschen.
This got excellent reviews but, overall, it really was not my sort of musical.
The gimmick of having just two actors (one male, one female) play all the adults was a fairly effective way of reminding the audience that it's the perspective of the teenagers we're seeing. But it was hard to have any sense of how old these children are supposed to be, with their mixture of naivete and worldliness.
As for the performances, most were fine, but I thought Steffi D (as Ilse) was a bit weak vocally. The scene stealer was Andy Mientus as Hanschen.
This got excellent reviews but, overall, it really was not my sort of musical.
