“Spring Awakening”
A musical based on the play by Frank Wedekind
Book by Steven Sater
Music by Duncan Sheik
Where: Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; 1:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Aug. 2
Info: $25 to $90; 202-467-4600; kennedy-center.org
When Frank Wedekind wrote “Spring Awakening” in 1891, he meant it to be social criticism aimed at small-minded individuals and repressive cultures. While Steven Sater’s bold and imaginative adaptation of “Spring Awakening” is designed to appeal to a more liberal time and audience, the core message is the same: youth represents energy and passion; age represents dishonesty and even death.
Sater’s brightest idea was to turn Wedekind’s adolescents into rock stars, using all the available vocabulary of rock to express their extreme emotions and yearning for self-knowledge. Suddenly the girls in long dresses and braids and the boys in school uniforms sprout microphones and gyrate in 21st century style as they consider the new demands of their bodies, the relevance of “The Aeneid,” their inability to get straight answers from their elders.
Sater’s book looks at a group of 11 teens, concentrating on three: bright and intelligent Melchior (the excellent Jake Epstein); innocent Wendla (Cristy Altomare) who begs her mother to explain the facts of life to her; and insecure Moritz (Blake Bashoff) who’s convinced he’ll never be able to function in the world.
The large cast at the Kennedy Center does more than justice to Duncan Sheik’s music, with its occasional intricate harmonies. Sater’s book is spare and clean, providing sequential scenes with little connective tissue, emphasizing the disconnect between the onstage world and reality. All adults, for instance, are played by two extremely versatile actors, Angela Reed and Henry Stram.
Director Michael Mayer and the talented choreographer Bill T. Jones play up that anti-realism, keeping the characters in almost perpetual motion, dancing as well as singing their responses to things that happen in the script.
“Spring Awakening” easily finds a metaphor for rebellious youth in its outrageously loud music and four-lettered lyrics. But that’s only one reason “Spring Awakening” has drawn such positive attention from contemporary audiences. The other reason is that it gently reproduces all the insecurity and tentativeness of first love in the sexual awakening story at its core, where, as Melchior observes, for one day a hayloft becomes paradise.
