Theatre in Review: Spring Awakening (Brooks Atkinson Theatre)

	Russell Harvard, Daniel N. Durant. Photo: Joan Marcus

Since the new production of Spring Awakening has been brought to Broadway by the Deaf West Theatre Company, it is fitting that many of its most telling moments unfold in silence -- or nearly so. As a matron uncomfortably prepares to instruct her daughter about the facts of life, an entire company of young people, looking on, leans forward, eager to get the facts for themselves. When a disaffected scholar denounces the military, machine-like nature of German society, everyone else executes a brief goosestep, extending their arms in an unspoken sieg heil, as if to remind us of the historical horrors that are just around the corner. A father brutally denounces his son, an academic failure, in mime, uttering only one word ("Why?") in such tones of terror and fury that the boy is left brutally crushed. Later, after the young man has committed suicide, his father stands at the grave, a solitary, dignified figure, only his eyes revealing his devastation, until his face collapses into silent tears.

Having completed its original hit run on Broadway only six years ago, Spring Awakening seemed like a notably odd choice for this season. But thanks to Michael Arden's imaginative staging and a bumper crop of young talent, this is the rare revival that is full of fresh, invigorating ideas. Any logistical difficulties raised by the double-casting of deaf and hearing actors seems to have challenged Arden and his choreographer, Spencer Liff, to come up with creative solutions. Furthermore, the presence of deaf performers goes to the heart of a show about young people raised in sexual ignorance and unable to communicate with the older generation.

Indeed, Arden's staging goes a long way toward papering over the show's weaknesses, including Steven Sater's wandering, ill-constructed libretto, taken perhaps too literally from Frank Wedekind's 1891 shocker of the same name, and songs (with compellingly melancholy melodies by Duncan Sheik) that often seem to be arbitrarily inserted into the action. Instead, the director capitalizes on what is most potent about Spring Awakening -- its ability get at the alienation of these Kaiser-era adolescents, allowing them to bare their longing and frustration in furious music and movement. Most of all, they are true to Wedekind's scalding vision: The young people of Spring Awakening are the product of good German homes of the late 19th century, and they are to be protected, at all costs, from any knowledge of their bodies -- with the result that two of the principals end up dead and a third finds himself utterly lost and abandoned.

Arden stages the action as a series of dreamlike episodes, an approach that confidently creates a common space for pre-Freudian sexual attitudes and 21st century indie rock music. The style is presentational, with musicians mixing with actors, and anyone and everyone wandering in and out of various scenes. Providing an extra bit of relevance, Arden has noticed that, only a few years before Spring Awakening takes place, the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf passed a resolution banning the use of sign language in favor of teaching lip reading, a cruel decision that no doubt blighted many young lives. Thus, a bullying Latin professor refuses to allow a student, the hapless Moritz, to sign a few lines from Virgil; forced to speak them in a nervous, halting manner, his words sounding awkward and unfamiliar, the boy is set up for a terrible humiliation. But there are many moments that capitalize on the presence of deaf actors in the cast. At the top of the show, Sandra Mae Frank, who plays the tragically innocent Wendla, looks in a "mirror" at Katie Boeck, who sings the role; through the mirror, Boeck hands Frank her first costume, while Frank hands her a guitar. In a single image, we are made to understand the kind of teamwork that will inform the evening.

The entire cast embraces this form of pairing with agility. Frank, who looks a bit like Lea Michele, the original Wendla, captures the character's natural reticence, contradicted by her fierce desire for knowledge and her impetuous attempts at getting it. (The latter includes a startling encounter involving Melchior and a tree branch, which is more plausibly staged than in the original.) Boeck lends her soulful voice to Wendla's songs, so naturally that the two seem to become one. That's pretty much the case with all the performances: The deaf actor Daniel N. Durant turns Moritz into something close to a walking open wound, his face a palimpsest of anxiety layered over pain; expert vocal accompaniment is provided by Alex Boniello, especially in Act II's roar of pain, "Don't Do Sadness." As Melchior, marked as the local bad boy for his avowed atheism, who finds himself in way over his head when a single sexual encounter with Wendla unleashes a tide of unforseen consequences, the hearing actor Austin P. McKenzie provides a kind of bridge between the members of the cast, singing and signing with equal fluency. He is especially good at showing that Melchior, for all his outward assurance, harbors a frightened boy inside as well.

The supporting cast is filled with familiar faces, all of whom catch the singular spirit of this enterprise. Andy Mientus strikes the right note of froideur as Hanschen, the class bisexual, who preys on the lonely Ernst (played by Joshua Castille and very nicely voiced, at my performance, by the swing Van Hughes). Mientus has an especially amusing scene where, desperate to bring himself to climax before his father invades the bathroom, he is assisted by several members of the cast. Krysta Rodriguez is touching as the dissolute Ilse, who was thrown out of the house for a minor escapade and now ekes out a living in an artists' colony. Among the adult members of the cast, Patrick Page lends his sonorous voice to a number of pitiless authority figures, Russell Harvard is wrenching as Moritz's unforgiving parent, and Marlee Matlin is a faintly mysterious presence as Melchior's oddly sympathetic mother. I was especially taken with Camryn Manheim, who is effortlessly witty in a several roles, whether cringing in embarrassment at the prospect of giving Wendla a biology lesson, or, as a lascivious piano teacher, resting her ample bosom on the instrument to give her terrified student a better view.

Liff's staging is equally fluid; faced with the memory of Bill T. Jones' highly original choreography, he creates his own vocabulary of moves designed to signal young bodies racked by confusion, fury, and lust. The show also has a visual style of its own: Dane Laffrey's set creates a backstage look, a concrete environment with an iron staircase leading to a second-floor gallery level, and a moving staircase that is put to good use in several numbers. (One of the odder missteps occurs in the finale, when the back wall opens up to reveal an image I probably shouldn't describe, but which is jarringly out of tone with the rest of the evening. Admittedly, it does lead to a powerful final image, of the adult characters, alone and abandoned in the darkness.) Lucy MacKinnon's projections provide key bits of dialogue and lyrics for those sequences when signing is impractical; she also supplies some bleak, black-and-white images of rain, snow, and various flora. Ben Stanton's lighting moves fluently between plain white washes, single-saturated color looks, and rock-concert freak-outs filled with color and movement. In one of the most striking moments, a suicide gun is fired, followed by a blinding white wash that leaves the entire cast exposed in their grief. Laffrey's costumes -- mostly school uniforms and august period ladies' gowns and men's suits -- are beautifully realized; interestingly, in keeping with much of the production's exposed theatricality, the "voice" performers are dressed in contemporary clothes.

The main weak point in the production -- and it's a big one -- is the sound design by Gareth Owen. It is perfectly intelligible in the dialogue scenes, but, during the songs, the voices are often indistinct and subordinated to the on-stage band. I can't quite put my finger on why this should be -- Owen is a true pro, with plenty of notable credits -- but it's a real problem, especially since Sater's lyrics are every bit as compelling as Sheik's music. Even if you are reasonably familiar with the score, as I am, the words are frustratingly hard to make out.

Still, this revival aces the main test, to provide a reason for being so soon after having departed Broadway. Following its 2003 revival of Big River, the is the second time Deaf West Theatre has brought to New York a fascinatingly original staging of an interesting, if imperfect, musical. Let's hope they don't stay away so long this time. -- David Barbour