*Spoiler Alert: This post is about the Broadway musical “Spring Awakening,” which I don’t think you should see. If you plan on seeing it anyway, you might not want to read on.
“Spring Awakening” may be the worst musical I’ve ever seen.
Mind you, I don’t know enough show tunes to last a night at Marie’s Crisis, but I can give a stereotypical gay man of my generation a run for his money. I filled in my bra listening to “Rent,” “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line,” and “Cabaret.” At the end of high school, I realized I might have missed out: “Exile in Guyville? What is this? Who’s Liz Phair?”
I’m occasionally open to seeing new musicals, because everything amazing has to start as a seed. I’m not into spectacles, though. I have no desire to see “Hairspray” or “Wicked,” and I’m waiting to see the film version of “Mamma Mia.”
But I thought “Spring Awakening” would be different. It won a lot of Tonys, so it couldn’t be cloying and preposterous, right? Wrong! I knew it was hyped, but I thought, “Ooh, Duncan Sheik did the music and it’s about adolescence. It’s got a lot of people talking, due to some risque scenes.” A friend had access to some discount tickets, courtesy of NYU, and I was in. I was excited to take TBID, who hasn’t seen a Broadway musical since he had to write a report on it in middle school, because I wanted to show him that musical theater can rock.
And “Spring Awakening” does rock, if you like All-American Rejects rejects. Consider the fact that not a year ago, you couldn’t shop at a major retailer without hearing such lyrical gems as, “I’m hot because I’m fly. You ain’t cause you not. This is why, this is why I’m hot…” The poppy soundtrack of this musical was so uncatchy, with some lyrics that were so incomprehensible, that even mainstream radio wouldn’t want it.
Not to mention that the show is completely implausible. All adults are played by the same two actors, because adults in the show are caricatures. They are all ignorant, with the exception of Melchior’s mother, who succumbs to her husband’s rule and plays dumb in the end. The teenage characters are undeveloped and just as unsympathetic. To tell you the story in a busted nutshell: Adults in “Spring Awakening” don’t want to talk to their children about sex, and then the world ends.
I’m an advocate of sex education, and I don’t mean the abstinence-only kind. But I know that sexual urges are not so all-consuming that they make teenagers explode and civilizations crumble. The writers of “Spring Awakening” would have audiences believe that one character commits suicide as a result of feeling sexually constrained. (There are other factors to this plot point, of course, but the sexual factor is the most apparent). I could understand if the play were about how adults can be unfair, but that was overshadowed by the themes of sexual taboos and exploration.
It was like watching something some high schoolers cooked up when the power went out one day when they’d been in the middle of a Real World marathon - the acting was that self-conscious and hackneyed. In a romantic scene between two gay characters, the actors got cheeky and made weird faces while singing about sex. The audience laughed; homophobia scored one more point.
I couldn’t bring myself to applaud anything I saw or heard. The musical numbers, like I said, were very poppy, but not in a good way. One in which a girl sings about incest had the audience bopping their heads, and I don’t know about you, but that weirds me out.
It was all shock, not to be confused with shock value. The shocking thing wasn’t a bare breast or butt or the song wherein a character simulates masturbation the entire time. It was that some critics have lauded “Spring Awakening.”
At the curtain call, TBID and I stayed in our seats. He looked at me, nervous about what to say. “I thought it was awful,” I finally spat out. He sighed. “Oh, I’m so glad.”
I can’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be as brilliant as you! Just kidding. Certainly, you are entitled to your opinion. But perhaps a little research would have helped you grasp the story.
I just think the musical version misses out on the power of spring awakening by making it pop rock. Sure it is all fine and dandy to talk about all this in a tongue and cheek manner with a beat you can dance to. But this is all supposed to be happening to 14 year olds or younger in a highly repressed early 1900’s Germany. So the rape, the abortion, the homosexuality all made difficult to watch because of the ages of those involved and how these transgressions are made even worse because of the stifling conservative and close-mindedness of the society. This new pop musical version just kind of missies the point, especially since the turning these subjects into pop songs is not so far off what mainstream pop music sings about.
i saw it and thought it was gripping, entertaining, and moving in varied ways. maybe you just didn’t get it? maybe you just can’t grasp it? have you ever thought that maybe it is just you?
Jeremy: I wonder if it would have been more compelling without the crappy music. In addition, I don’t know how the original script was altered. Perhaps better acting could have also made it a better show. But yeah, BLARGH.
Anon 1:54: I definitely researched the show before seeing it, as I do pretty much before any play or film I see.
Anon 6:53: Maybe I just have better taste that you. Just kidding…a little. I really love some musicals and “Spring Teenangsting” just doesn’t measure up in my opinion. But that’s the glory of opinions. Don’t get pissy.
Amanda,
You mentioned that you “definitely researched the show before seeing it”. Yet you admit to “not knowing how the original script was altered”. Having seen this musical ten times on Broadway and knowing the creators, I know that this musical has a huge following. This is clearly “something special”, as evidenced by the National Tour beginning in mid-August, 2008 and already scheduled to run for more than a year. Additionally, in February, 2009, an International Touring production will begin in London and include approximately eleven countries. It’s OK not to like it. But perhaps it is tens of thousands of others that have better taste than you.
whoopi goldburg gave the show props yesterday on the view. guess she has bad taste too!
Opinion people, not fact. As much as she might like to disagree, she isn’t god.
Oh, you people. You’re still allowed to see the show and listen to bad music. That’s fine. My post was not a critical review of the entire plot. It simply consisted of my opinions, which happen to not be swayed by some bandwagon argument.
I don’t care if tens of thousands of people liked “Spring Awakening,” tens of thousands of people also liked the American Pie movies. And should I really be swayed by the Whoopi argument? She doesn’t have eyebrows. Should I follow that idea, too?
You are all so cute when you’re trying to argue.
CUNT
Boy that’s mature. You’ll really show her now!
No it’s not just you. I recently saw it and i thought it was trying a bit too pathetically hard to be as risque and controversial as it could. There’s incest, nudity, sex scenes, abortion, suicide… oh and let’s not forget to throw homosexual encounters in there! Give me a break. I was sadly disappointed. The whole thing was just unbelieveable. I didn’t believe in the love between the two main characters and it was laughable how they just threw the gay encounter in there with little dialogue between the two guys. As i got up to leave, the girl in front of me who was with her parents said, “See that’s what happens when parents try to control their children’s lives.” There’s a future great mind for America.
Thank you, final anonymous. I knew I wasn’t alone on this.