[NEohioPAL] Review of "Spring Awakening" at Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman]

Beck Center/B-W partnership leads to a passionate 'Spring Awakening'

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 2/10/12

 

Teenage angst is no stranger to the stage.  In fact, there is no better, more universal, and less time-sensitive source of dramatic sturm und drang than raging hormones hitting the wall of societal norms while under strict parental supervision.  

 

Hope may spring eternal, but angst is not far behind.  

 

As far back as the 5th-century BC, Euripides was relaying the tragic tale of tormented, teenaged Electra.  Shakespeare's romantic rendering of adolescent anguish, "Romeo and Juliet," was published in 1597.

 

"Spring Awakening," currently on stage at the Beck Center for the Arts, may very well be the most intensely passionate musical portrayal of tortured young souls.  Arriving on Broadway in 2006, the musical is based on an 1892 play by Frank Wedekind that was so controversial it wasn't produced for 15 years and only after significant censorship and under the threat of closure.  Playwright/lyricist Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik went back to the original text and set to modern music their treatise on sexual repression, religious rebellion, physical abuse, and suicide.  

 

With a relentless rock score set against the incompatible backdrop of a provincial 19th-century German secondary-school, "Spring Awakening" exists in the same state of contrast and tension as its subjects.  Staged with minimalist production values void of theatrical pyrotechnics and the distraction of elaborate sets, the play focuses its full attention on its young, troubled storytellers. 

 

Doing so makes for a particularly profound and moving piece of storytelling, for the angst depicted in this play was once ours and this play's bare, bold, and haunting presentation stirs memories of the agony and the ecstasy of our own teenage self-discovery.  

 

Not bad for a night at the theater.

 

The primary problem with putting on this musical is finding performers young enough to pass as teenagers but old enough to have the maturity and stage training to do justice to a show that won eight Tony Awards and catapulted the career of Lea Michele, now on TV's "Glee."

 

To their credit, the brain trust at the Beck Center struck an alliance with Baldwin-Wallace College, whose Music Theatre program is one of the nation's top repositories for young, talented performers.  Seventeen B-W students comprise the cast of obedient schoolchildren biting at the bit controlled by their severe parents and Machiavellian teachers. 

 

The entire ensemble is phenomenal.  Featured performers include Kyra Kennedy, whose inquisitive Wendla struggles to understand the physical and emotional desires her mother won't explain.  Zach Adkins plays the brilliant anarchist Melchior, and does so with incredible passion and appeal.  As Melchior's best friend Moritz, James Penca is angst personified.  Every word, every reaction, every hair follicle is an explosion of pent-up energy and wayward emotion.

 

Everyone on stage has a voice and presence as powerful as they are expressive.  Every performer, surrounded by caring classmates, takes daring, creative risks that pay off big time.  Andrea Leach as Ilse, Rachel Brawley as Thea, Nick Varricchio as Hanschen, and Chris Cowan as Ernst deliver particularly riveting performances.

 

Equity actors Scott Plate and Laura Perrotta play all of the assorted adults in the lives of these children.  They do so with incredible dexterity and distinctiveness.  

 

In addition to tapping B-W students, the Beck Center has procured the services of several faculty, including Victoria Bussert as director.   Bussert brings to the table a proven track record for turning large-scale productions into very personal journeys, including last year's on-campus renderings of "Rent" and "La Boheme."  Her "Spring Awakening" in an intense and intimate affair, facilitated by B-W colleagues in other key production positions who share her vision, attention to detail, and expertise.

 

Choreographer Gregory Daniels reworks all that was inventive in the show's original staging and creates movement just as potent and equally reflective of the rapid pulse of impetuous youth.   

 

Set and lighting designer Jeff Herrmann surrounds his simple, stripped-down, two-tier set with hanging blackboards.  Their chalk-drawn textbook diagrams of genitalia serve as effective representations of the omnipresence of budding sexuality and the sterile formality with which it was approached in Victorian era Germany.  

 

Despite some opening night sound problems that tended to neutralize intricate harmonies and orchestration, particularly during the hard-rocking "The Bitch of Living," "My Junk" and "Totally Fu*ked," the seven-piece on-stage orchestra under B-W senior Ryan Fielding Garrett's direction, is superb.   

 

Clearly, not everyone will find this play's subject matter appropriate, be moved by its driving rhythms, or feel comfortable taking a sentimental journey back to pubescence.  Those that do will find this production to be just as professional and passionate as the national Broadway tour that came through Cleveland in 2009.  Maybe even more so. 

 

"Spring Awakening" runs through March 4 at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.    For tickets, which range from $10-$28, call 216-521-2540 x10 or visit www.beckcenter.org.
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