‘Spring Awakening’ is just too much

PHOTO by PAUL KOLNIK

Sitting among the region’s more well-off blue-hairs in attendance at the opening performance of Spring Awakening felt a little bit like the first time I watched Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis sweatily swap spit in Top Gun as an eight-year-old perched beside my mother. It was at times painfully, brutally and unbearably awkward, the only difference being that at least with Top Gun my mother could reach for the remote and make it stop.

It’s easy to see why Spring Awakening garnered such high acclaim on Broadway (multiple Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Choreography). Set to music composed by über-dependable pop musician Duncan Sheik, its story of late-nineteenth-century German teenagers fumbling through adolescent sexual anxiety (and with their own and one another’s naughty bits)—adapted from an 1891 German play by the same title—is an explosion of aggressive button-pushing. Circle jerking, singular wanking, BDSM 101—”I just want to feel something!” pleads young Wendla Bergmann, begging to be disciplined with a switch by the rebellious heartthrob Melchior Gabor—it’s all here, delivered via what is for the most part a very good hybrid twee/emo score (yes, I mean that).

But there’s also a lot more going on, from depression and suicide to child abuse, teen pregnancy and abortion. And while I suppose the sight of 350 70-year-olds recoiling in terror as the teenagers onstage sing “Totally Fucked” should more than make up for the second act’s blistering what-wait-huh? storytelling, Spring Awakening suffers nonetheless from its insistence upon tackling every single source of teenage lust and angst. Subtract the score and you’re left with the Footloose of fucking. It’s decent.

SPRING AWAKENING ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER • 600 TOWN CENTER DR • COSTA MESA 92626 • 714.755.0236 • WED-FRI 7:30PM, SAT 2&7:30PM, SUN 1&6:30PM • THROUGH NOV 29 • $20-70 • OCPAC.ORG

Tags: adolescence, footloose, ocpac, sex, spring awakening, Theater, top gun