Spring Awakening
Spring AwakeningReview By: Marisa SchlossmanSpring Awakening is like nothing I’ve seen in theater before, and I’ve seen a lot of theater. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, how far they would go or if it would be totally awkward if I looked away during the racy scenes. And it’s for all of those reasons that Spring Awakening is a beautiful, original piece of work that is funny, heartbreaking and refreshingly real.Spring Awakening revolves around a group of young adults set in the 1890’s in a German town caught in the middle of being children but becoming adults. It’s at this time that they are each experiencing awakenings, be it falling in love or just questioning life in general. But there is one major roadblock in their way of growing up: all the adults in their life. Their teachers and parents dictate for them what is right and wrong, they provide the children with only the knowledge they want them to know and restrict them to anything else. The adults make these children repress their urges and instincts and, in a sense, force their awakenings to lie dormant.The characters with the most to lose from all of this are Wendla (Lea Michele) and Melchior (Jonathan Groff) who fall in love despite not even knowing what love even is, and their friend Moritz (John Gallagher, JR.) who is kicked out of school. How can these characters go on living the life they want to if everyone around them is telling them they can’t? And what kind of life does that allow for?The play is the contemporary adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening with music by Duncan Sheik. Back in Wedekins’s day, the 1890’s, the play was either banned completely or censored for audiences due to its issues like sexual relationships and puberty. While there is no denying that this show is for mature audiences only, I’m grateful to live in a time where the creators were bold enough to tell this story in the way that they did…even if the onstage love scenes makes Avenue Q appear as tame as Sesame Street.This play reminds me of Dead Poet’s Society with music…amazing music at that. The songs are so full of life and excitement that I found myself holding my breath during some scenes, they were that good. The music makes you wish you knew the songs beforehand so you could sing along to the upbeat ones and revel in the slow ones.Spring Awakening will make you laugh out loud at one moment and make you cry the next, which is really what life, and Spring Awakening is all about.