When I saw Spring Awakening last month, I didn't immediately love it. I enjoyed it, but I thought the second act was ballad heavy and didn't rock hard enough and that the man story took too long to develop. I bought the CD soon after, and I can't stop listening to it. There is something in the music that keeps drawing me back - lyrics, voices, imagery - it's something different each time. And it's not even the same song that gets stuck in my head each time...it's usually different.
The show has since won several Tony's and thus increased in popularity and visibility, which it deserves. The cast is wonderful. And the story events, set in the repressed German society in the 1800s all goes back to the simple question "Where do babies come from?" The mother's point blank refusal to answer this simple question sets the plot in motion. How can a girl know if she's having sex if she doesn't know what sex is?
It's hard to fathom this in our culture. Children are learning about sex younger and younger and that's both good and bad. Wendla, the main female character in the play, did not know what she was doing. It's all there in the lyrics (which, by the way, are in present day vernacular). The imagery in the lyrics is beautiful, invoking the images of a blue angel seducing the boys.
The boys, Melchior - the one who is too smart for his own good and draws the wrath of his faceless elders by creating a sex manual, and Moritz, the suffering, school challenged one whose wild hairstyle is the manifestation of his inner termoil, are incredible characters. I felt most drawn to Moritz, especially in light of my recent studies, who expresses himself in electric-guitar highlighted songs and voices the confusion and frustration that many teens can identify with.
The most underdeveloped character that I found most interesting is Ilse, a girl who lives outside the society of the rest; a runaway who has more freedom than all of the rest put together. Ilse appears in the first act to sing a duet about being sexually abused but then offers Moritz an alternative to suffering at school, which he ultimately rejects.
The songs are sung as an interior monologue of the characters, with pulsing sexuality under their demure dresses and school uniforms. I would love to see the show again now that I know more about it and won't be looking for it to be something it's not. I have never seen a Broadway show more than once except for Rent (which is coming up again :oD)...but this one would be well worth the second look...as long as the original cast is still around.
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