Too Old for Rock and Roll?

The Broadway show Spring Awakening is the subject of this particular blog but before I get into my impression(s) of it I want to make a statement--more of a question really. Well, several questions. At what point in a show’s run do the producers, directors, actors and even stagehands forget that the majority of the audience is seeing and hearing it for the first time? At what point do backstage or onstage personnel forget that the words count for something? Through a thousand repetitions I’m sure all of them understand every word, every performance, and can quote (and probably sing) them flawlessly, without hesitation.

I also understand that it is important that the artists are keeping it “fresh” and are concentrating on making a beautiful sound. I appreciate these efforts but I don’t see why clarity should be sacrificed. In the modern musical lyrics are plot-forwarding words and they need to be handled as such. Diction, children, diction!

Of course, in the modern rock musical, the decibel level doesn’t help. At what point is meaning lost through sheer volume? I think this has become a major problem on and off-Broadway and someone in every production needs to address the reality. Yes, by all means, go see the current production of Rent (closing in September) but bring an interpreter.

Spring Awakening is based on an 1891 play by German playwright Frank Wedekind. It is filled with all kinds of kinky stuff like puritanical sexual repression, evil officialdom, pubescent sexual awakening, cutesy homosexuality, a little S&M, child abuse, gratuitous (hetero) sex and nudity, suicide, violence, abortion, death, ghostly visitations and, I think (if I got the ending right) a touch of redemption. I’m not real sure about the redemption part but I’m under the impression our brave prison-escaping hero probably took the first steam locomotive out of town, probably to America; perhaps on the Titanic. Spring Awakening has all those things and some swirling stage mist that made me glad I was sitting in the mezzanine.

It also has some pretty good, pleasant-to-the-ear rock music, sung in 21st-century American Idol-ish style by a cast of wonderful, very young, actor/singers. I hate to use the word but the juxtaposition of modern rock music superimposed upon an 1890’s Germanic milieu was pretty damned “interesting.” Even though that sounds condescending I don’t mean it that way. I was never bored. The tech side of the production is top notch and sometimes visually stunning. Oh, yeah, lest I forget, I don’t agree with having audience members seated on stage which is, maybe, a holdover from its original off-Broadway production. I don’t really want to see gratuitous nose-picking by anybody; much less someone not paid to do it.

Spring Awakening won several Tony Awards in 2007 including Best Musical, Director (Mike Mayer), Choreographer (Bill T. Jones) Book (Steven Sater), Score (Sater & Duncan Sheik), Orchestrations (Sheik) and Lighting (Kevin Adams). All well deserved.