Playwright: Steven Sater;. Composer: Duncan Sheik; after Frank Wedekind. At: Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph. Phone: 800-775-2000; $25-$95. Runs through: Aug. 16
There's a danger that comes when critics lavish and effusive praise on a new musical. By the time you see it, the show doesn't live up to the hype.
That's how some people might feel about the critically acclaimed eight-time Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening.
For Spring Awakening to be truly effective, it should have played in a smaller Chicago venue ( an extended run at the Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place would have been ideal ) . In the cavernous Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre, the intimate power of Spring Awakening gets dissipated.
That's a pity, since the creative team of Spring Awakening have hit upon an interesting concept to musicalizing Frank Wedekind's oft-banned 1891 play about German youths discovering their budding sexuality. Although dressed in turn-of-the-19th-century clothes, the teenagers express their emotions by singing modern-day rock songs.
It's composer Duncan Sheik and librettist Steven Sater's way of showing that teenage angst from back then is probably not that different from teenage angst of today. So we get schoolboys singing "The Bitch of Living" about their unfulfilled sexual cravings ( to Bill T. Jones' oddly spastic and angular chorography ) , while teenage girls express their cute-guy crushes in "My Junk."
Director Michael Mayer extends this concept further into the staging, which features audience members seated on the stage. Strategically placed cast members in modern clothing often arise from that crowd to offer vocal support to remind you that teenagers today still don't get much help from adults when it comes to dealing with topics like abuse, suicide or birth control.
Mayer's use of the same two actors to portray all the male and female authority figures is not only economical ( very effective turns by Henry Stram and Angela Reed ) , but it also shows how unfeeling adults can all appear to be alike to struggling teens.
Though many of the characters are sketchily drawn, actors like Blake Bashoff as the hyper-stressed Moritz, Jake Epstein as the intellectual Melchoir, Christy Altomare as the curious Wendla and Matt Shingledecker as the self-absorbed Georg all find memorable ways to flesh out their roles.
The rest of the cast is also proficient, as is the deceptively simple production design ( featuring great saturated color by lighting designer Kevin Adams ) and the rocking onstage band led by music director Jared Stein.
If you buy into all of Spring Awakening's staging and writing concepts, you'll love it as a piece of youthful and daring theater. If not, the show will feel heavy-handed and pretentious.
I find myself somewhere in the middle on Spring Awakening. I admire a lot of its energy, but I could do without all of its self-important attitude.
