[NEohioPAL] Review of Broadway's "Spring Awakening"

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Broadway’s ‘Spring Awakening’ gives the wind a mighty voice



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics

  

Theater has always been at its best when it speaks for those who are denied a voice because they are perceived as different or live in a time of disenfranchisement.



This is why it’s a big deal when concerns are raised about the lack of female playwrights on Broadway and accolades are offered to productions like “Hamilton,” “Fun Home,” “Allegiance” and “The Color Purple” for their portrayal and hiring of members of Hispanic, LGBTQ, Asian, and African-American communities, respectively.  



And, of course, it is a big deal that the revival of the Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater musical “Spring Awakening,” in production at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre since September 2015 and closing later this month, has cast Ali Stroker, the first wheelchair-bound actor to perform on Broadway, as well as an ensemble comprised in equal parts of hearing and deaf actors. 



But non-traditional casting is not what makes “Spring Awakening” great; it is what director Michael Arden, his team of designers, his cast, choreographer Spencer Liff, and American Sign Language masters Elizabeth Greene, Anthony Natale and Shoshannah Stern do with it.



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.  
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