Spring Awakening

Well my Spring has been awakened. I got to see Spring Awakening tonight at the Keller. The tour is in town. I highly suggest seeing this show. It was a good time. I happened to be sitting next to two teenage girls who were loving every minute of it and even grabbed each others hands when the cute boy got up to sing. EEEEE! SO EXCITING. AWWW...remember, remember what that was like? To have your heart leap out of your throat you were so excited!?

I am not a huge musical fan. It's not the unrealistic behavior of bursting out into song, I know plenty of people that do this for real in real life, I'm not sure what it is exactly. But whatever. The songs in this show do an excellent job of giving you that teenager feeling again. These characters may be in period dress, but god damn do they rock out with their cock out. And I have to say, thank god for the masturbation, abuse, sexual abuse, sex ( he makes like he puts it in...yeah. This was too much for some), suicide, boys kissing boys, and an abortion. Finally a musical that gets down and dirty. Oh wait? Aren't these things also in Grease and it Rent (and many others I can't remember right now)? SOOO...why were some of the "older" theater patrons around me so shocked...cuase the actors are kids. Literally the cast is pulled from high schools and colleges around the country. And apparently when they auditioned they had to make a myspace page to see how many hits they could get. The kid with the most hits got called in. Yep...so I hear. Or maybe it's because the blocking is more graphic. Will someone tell me...please.

Anyway, it was a good night all told. The choreography was really interesting and the set was cool. It almost looked like it was 3D at points because of the lighting, which was also really well done. Very rock and roll but could so scale back and be poetic. The hanging light bulbs reminded me of the Armory chandelier. Oh and there were young kids pulled from the audience and asked to sit on these bleachers on stage and be part of the ensemble. Marc Acito, who I ran into at intermission thought I was one of those kids. To be fair, the girl he was referring to kinda did look like me: white with long blonde hair. And the band was on stage and the characters interacted with it (several characters sat down and played the piano) and were constantly pulling mics out of their jackets or handing them to each other. I feel like this was a choice by the director to make it feel more like a rock concert than a musical. Don't hide the mics that's sooo musical theater. Of course they were wearing body mics as well, but the choice to pull out the mics and use the mic stand had to have been a deliberate choice. It's so more rock and roll.

I'm really glad I was able to go. Thanks Cynthia for the tickets! I can't wait for the rights to become avalible.