Review: Spring Awakening by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Spring Awakening won eight of the 2007 Tony awards, including that for best musical, and the powerful production opened by the Zach Theatre last Saturday shows you why. This very contemporary musical adaptation of Franz Wedekind's Spring Awakening has played across Europe, and the U.S. national touring company fielded by Broadway Across America visited Bass Hall for a week in October, 2009. Awakening has now settled in to the Kleberg Stage until November 13 playing an extended Tuesday to Sunday schedule. Zach management clearly expects this one to resound with the Austin public.
The time is the late 19th century and the place is a quietly repressed, sinister bourgeois community in rural Germany. The story is one that encompasses child abuse, sexual ignorance, adolescent suicide and a hushed-up death, all orbiting themes of the sexual awakening of children aged around thirteen. The Zach's production, true to the script and the music, takes these matters head-on, each actor approaching his character's criminal sexuality with a child-like shamelessness and a believable innocence.
The show is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for those offended by stage depictions of sex. Can you laugh at a young man avidly masturbating on the toilet while reading a penny-dreadful novel? What would you think of some adolescent sado-masochism with a switch? An intense, angry song by two girls about fathers who fondle them at bedtime or even do more? The first act ends with the tense, lengthy, very hot and fully suggestive seduction of sweet innocent Wendla by her smart, troubled friend Melchior, staged in profile on a high platform as a grim Lutheran pastor preaches below them to the robed choir.
The few in the audience taken by surprise by this may well be tempted to opt out of the second half. It’s more likely that those ill at ease with this apparent frankness will be held by the catchy, contemporary numbers and the vigorous musical accompaniment directed by Zach regular Allen Robertson. The scoring includes a bass, a violin, a cello, a guitar, keyboards and percussion accompaniments, a lively juxtaposition of pop, jazz and classical elements that the ensemble executes from the opening moments with a hectic hormonal energy.
Sara Burke, in the lead as Wendla, with her slim figure, dancer’s 
movement and lovely singing voice has long been a favorite in musicals at the Georgetown Palace, and she is captivating in this role. Male leads Jordan Barron as the awkward, school-challenged and brutalized Moritz and Johnny Newcomb as rebel with arrant cause are vivid performers.
Jason Phelps has the thankless role of the oppressor, playing all of the adult men; Melissa Grogan, his female counterpart, portrays not only the horrendous school teacher types but also the bewildered mothers unable to protect their children. The remaining cast members are without exception thoroughly accomplished performers; Josh Wechsler is memorable for a couple of droll cameos, as is Travis Cornett.
This isn’t the 19th century; it’s the 21st-century-commentary on control of sexuality through ignorance, a message that is relevant today. For each episode of repression there’s an outburst of surging contemporary sung comment. None is more amusing than the moment when Melchior is harshly confronted by school authorities with the evidence that he has written a ten-page illustrated essay about human sexuality. “Did you or did you not write this? Answer in one word!” Melchi hesitates, harassed, aware that he’s about to be annihilated, then seizes a microphone, turns to us and delivers a wilding number on the theme “I’m fucked!” It’s horrific, it’s true to adolescent life, and it resounded with lots of folks in the audience.
Michael Raiford's clever set captures both worlds with its construction of rigid slatted walls and wooden platforms providing the constraints for the 19th century, then exploding with many-colored lighting elements seen through the gaps and across the hoardings. It's a witty visual commentary on the intent and structure of the play.
The relentless liveliness of the musical and the swift choreography of the transitions deliver a fast-paced and overall pleasant theatre experience. While the story's message --warning of the dangers of moral tyranny -- is sobering and predictable but ever-applicable, the dizzying, tongue-in-cheek music sending up the misguided adults throughout will leave audiences wondering whether the events were tragic or comic. The final feel-good scene is staged in contemporary casual dress and one is led to self-congratulation for the healthful evolution of our attitudes toward sex. That’s wish fulfillment, of course, but so is much of theatre, especially when the piece is looking to entice a younger crowd with an experience they can’t get on TV or on DVD.
Director Dave Steakley, about to celebrate his twentieth year running the Zach with a high-priced-ticket fundraiser at the W hotel, proves again that he has a keen commercial nose as well as an expert hand in choosing shows and directors. Michael Baron, artistic director of the Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma selected terrific artists and pushed them to the exciting utmost.
And a footnote: there’s a credible report that the copyright owners have reworked this material into a ‘school edition’ of Spring Awakening and have invited players of one of Austin’s leading high school theatre departments to stage it. But of that, more anon.
Review by Clare Canavan for the Statesman's Austin360 Seeing Things blog, September 26
Review by Olin Meadows for AustinOnStage.com, October 14
Review by Elizabeth Cobbe in the Austin Chronicle, October 20
EXTRA
Click to view excerpts from the Zach program for Spring Awakening
[co-author: Hannah Bisewski]
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Spring Awakening
by Duncan Sheik, Steven Sater, based on Wedekind's play
Zach Theatre
