Shariq’s Département

The usually barren post-Tony summer theatre season in New York is a great time to catch up on shows from prior years that have had great success and are still running.

The intimate, powerful, stirring 2007 Best New Musical Tony winner, Spring Awakening is a great bet.  The show, adapted from a story about teenage angst in late 19th century Germany in a society which represses sexuality and individual expression, is an amazing blend of rock, intimate singing and raw energy.  The theatre is small, so the audience very much feels that they are a part of this soul baring that is happening on stage.  I felt the audience members around me reacting, clapping almost every five minutes.  There was electricity in the air.

The show combines witty dialog with great music, vocals and strong performances by Alexandra Socha as Wendla, the girl who dying (literally) to express her sexuality, and Blake Bashoff as the effervescent, wild, spike-haired Moritz.  Alexandra’s performance is especially noteworthy as her sinuous physicality echoes her plaintive songs and her face expresses depth of emotion that might rival Meryl Streep!

The story about societal repression is certainly applicable today - it might not be sexuality in present day U.S. (although certainly sex and sexuality are repressed in so many parts of the developing world); but the show is a metaphor for how conservative elements in society cause harm by repressing free spirits they don’t understand.  We can laugh at how silly it seems that the German adults in the show are alarmed at adolescent hormones, but the point the show wants to make is that what seems crazy today might be perfectly normal a few decades from now.  So if a social conservative rails against specific “out-of-the-box” behaviour, the world might be laughing at the stupidity of this person a few years later.

My one complaint about the show is that the staging of the one gay love scene is set up for laughs, as the boys act overly effeminate, playing into stereotypes.  Although the scene adds comic relief, perhaps another, more serious scene to balance the comic one out would have been a clearer depiction of gay sexuality.

See it - one of the best shows on Broadway!