Sunday Showtunes

NOW LET’S RAP THIS UP

My first Broadway show of 2007 is “Spring Awakening.”  If you change the word “Spring” to “Sexual” and picture a group of Emo kids in knickers, you have the whole plot.  It’s about sex-education for deprived adolescents in 1891 Germany.  The show is based on an old German play, and it’s done as a period piece, but the music, explicit sex, and profanity is contemporary.  The score is rock music, which you can tell because whenever someone starts singing, they whip a hand-held wireless microphone from their pocket – I guess in case you can’t tell by listening to the music!  (This device is rather unintentionally comical, in my opinion, so it’s amazing that most of the time – but not all of the time – the audience “suspended disbelief” and bought into it, without snickering.  Me, I was rather annoyed by it – especially since it was used inconsistently and seemingly for no reason other than to be a device).

I had been looking forward to “Spring Awakening” since I have heard nothing but great things about it.  The critics all hailed it, saying things like “A musical for a new generation,”  “the freshest, most original musical on Broadway,”  and “the best rock musical ever written.”  Everyone on my “geek” list raved about it as being incredible and a breath of fresh air in a season full of self-referential jukebox fluff.  Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped.  When I planned it, I rather thought the trip would go out with a bang by seeing “Spring Awakening” last, but maybe it suffered by having to follow the incredible energy and experience of “The Wedding Singer” yesterday - after the “200 percent” that cast gave, watching these folks do just another Monday show didn’t quite cut it -- or maybe it was that I was sleep-deprived and had trouble keeping my eyes open at a couple of points.  (Of course, if the show had been incredible, I bet that wouldn’t have been a problem!)  It’s a different kind of show (a small, dramatic, sexual musical) which I tried to take into account – but still, it’s how you are entertained that counts. 

It was well-performed and all, I did like the music even if it wasn’t dramatically important (most of the songs don’t expand on anything after the title, and like “Avenue Q”, the title is usually the first line in the song), and the lighting design was nice, but I have to chalk this up as overrated.  I certainly didn’t find it that fresh or original.  It’s true that the music doesn’t sound “Broadway” – it sounds like what kids are listening to on their ipods or alt-rock radio.  It most often recalled “Rent,” another show about young angst and sexuality, and in fact had lots of similarities in approach and music (notwithstanding the fact that some of “Rent” sounds like “Broadway-rock.”).  Both shows have a simple unit set (this one had about 20 audience members seated onstage, on the sides, sort of like “Cats”) and both began starkly and without music, with the house lights still up, by characters simply walking on and beginning to speak.  What this one has that “Rent” didn’t was songs called “Totally Fu**ed” (which brought the house down) and “The Bitch of Living.”  (Hmmm, wonder which one will perform on the Tonys?)

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