“Spring Awakening” has been shocking audiences for more than a century now, first as a play by the German dramatist Frank Wedekind, and in the last 10 years as a hit rock musical. It took 14 years after it was written to get a performance with its controversial themes of youthful sexuality, rape and abortion. In fact, a few years later it was banned after one performance in New York.
As a rock musical more than a century after its origin, it was a huge Broadway success, winning the Tony for best musical, best score and best book and six other Tony Awards, plus numerous other accolades. All that approval doesn’t change one thing: it is still shocking, especially in these sexually permissive times when the prohibitions of 19th century rural Germany seem so repressive.
“Spring Awakening” opened Saturday at the Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre in a much-anticipated production helmed by Sean F. Gray, the end of the Studio’s 2014 season. That production, filled with a lot of nudity amidst the songs, was clamorously received by the Long Beach audience. The first question that comes to mind is: Was that nudity, full and direct, necessary to tell this story of 19th century sexual repression?
The clear answer is no. “Spring Awakening” has been done with fully-clothed actors, with success. Indeed, Wedekind, a 19th century dramatist, would never have thought of anything else, and the story may well be more shocking clothed than naked.
When Angela Griswold, as youthful Wendla, stands, at the play’s start, fully naked in front of an empty mirror frame and slowly gets dressed as her mother (Ilse, played by Nina Ramos) watches, it may be innocent enough, but the audience has to have, at the least, a feeling of voyeurism and sexual interest mixed with feelings of empathy for the character. When Matthew Jennings sings naked on stage, the audience can’t be just listening to his song. That is Gray’s point: he wants to put the sex in this drama right up front. It is about sexual passion, long repressed, bubbling up and ruining lives where it has been cruelly hidden. To some extent, that diminishes the story, but it may be a fair interpretation.
“Spring Awakening” is a musical, though, and the music goes a long way to make the story lyrical and accessible. Musical director Mike Walker, on keyboard, directs the score with some passion, but often in solo passages the peculiarities of the Studio Theatre defeat him. It was sometime hard to hear lyrics clearly, and sometimes they were perfectly clear. The choreography by Halley Wright was dynamic and direct. But the songs were sometimes less than overwhelming.
Leonardo Moradi was a dynamic presence as Moritz, the young student whose success and life are destroyed by erotic dreams he doesn’t understand. His hair, standing straight up in a mohawk with sides cut in a Prussian-style buzz cut, made him stand out on stage, and his passion was coupled with that haircut to make him memorable.
The cast was more than capable Saturday night: Cort Huckabone and Sonja Taylor as the adults in the play, Tommy Tafoya as Ernst and Michael H.D. Phillips as Hanschen, and many more. “Spring Awakening” is a play about the 19th century, true, but it resonates with us more than 100 years later, telling us how much we have changed, for the better, and how many things still need to be changed. If you are shocked by nudity, rape or abortion, this play isn’t for you. If you want to hear the songs and the story they tell, sit in the front row and listen.
John Farrell is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.
