Spring Awakening

One of the amazing things about Oxford is the theatre.  With 38 colleges, six private halls, and two professional theatres in the city, there is never a week (or day) without more theatre happening than I (or anyone else) can possibly fit into their schedules.  One of my biggest regrets about last term was that I let this amazing opportunity pass me by, and only went to a grand total of one play.  And that one wasn't even that great.  I've been trying to rectify this failure by making a conscientious effort to see theatre this term, aiming for one show a week.  While I haven't completely succeeded, I have quadrupled my show-numbers from last term, and it's only the end of sixth week.

Today I went to Spring Awakening, and while not my favorite of the shows I've seen this term, it was definitely interesting.  A musical set in 19th-century Germany, it was advertised as a kind of period Rent -- a coming-of-age story about sex and death and loss of innocence.  As the show was played, however, it was considerably more innocent than Rent, and I think that innocence would have clung on even with traditional staging (which involves considerable nudity).

The thing about Rent is that it's a play about despair and hope -- the search for meaning among individuals who have lost faith in society, and long for something, anything, that can give significance back to life.

Spring Awakening, on the other hand, is a story about "purple summers" -- the innocence of childhood, and the (unthinking, unintentional?) cruelty/stupidity of those (in this case adults/parents) who have the power to crush their dreams.  Yes there is sex, and maybe even rebellion, but it is still, in many ways, very innocent -- the uncertain attempts of young adults to find their way forward into a world that no one has been willing to explain.  When the main girl gets pregnant, she honestly doesn't know what she's done.  Despite her persistent questioning at the beginning of the play, her mother refuses to tell her the "facts of life," leaving Wendla in a place, by the end, where all she can do is demand, "Why didn't you tell me the whole truth?"

But an unplanned, unexpected pregnancy is not the tragedy of the play.  It's the way that optimistic hope is crushed, consistently, irrevocably, by "the real world" of the adult community -- a community that can't bend it's rules, whether those involve only allowing 60 students to advance (no matter how hard the 61st has worked to pass) or the moral imperative that declares a young girl evil and sinful if she is carrying life outside of marriage, regardless of the circumstances.  It is these rules that refuse to allow Wendla and Melchior to have a future, even though they want one, and that leaves the children wounded and hurting by the play's end -- not looking forward to the uncontained potential of the future, as they should be, but aching from the past and dreading a world that seems to offer nothing but bitterness and closed doors.     

However, despite the interesting themes and incredible acting on the part of Melchior (a good friend of one of my lovely college-mates, who also wrote a critique of the show, which can be looked at over here), the play itself was flawed.  Not quite what a musical should be.  To be honest, it reminded me too much of Glee, where songs are sung because they're pretty (or perhaps reference a relevant theme) rather than as an effortless continuation of the narrative or outflowing of a character's emotional state (or soul).  The music was nice-sounding, but out-of-place for a small town in the 1800s (as was the set and costume design), and therefore jarring.  But even if this discontinuity is ignored, the music was still hard to follow, and definitely didn't tell a story -- not in the same way that the dialogue did.

What annoyed me most, though, was the way in which thematic elements were thrown in even though they had no grounding in the actual narrative.  The parts of the play that worked were the stories: the times when we saw concrete pain and abuse in the lives of characters we knew and cared about.  When that theme of abuse (which was clearly what the writer was going for, and hitting us over the heads with) was simply thrown in for the heck of it, without relevance to actual characters (and sometimes actually contradicting information we knew about them) it just became too much.  You don't add a song about sexual abuse for the heck of it.  It has to matter.  And it didn't.  Not to the story, and not to our understanding of the characters (who were actually, for all I could tell, dealing with the issue of physical abuse, not molestation). 

But perhaps part of it was the way the play was performed.  The very innocence of it.  Because there are definitely hints of a darker interpretation.  Not simply kids being abused by "the system," but the ambiguity of a violence that is contained both within the imposed innocence and within the imposed awakening.  In response to learning that her friend is beaten, Wendla demands that Melchior hit her, so she can know what it feels like.  And he does; and he goes too far.  Later, when they are in the hay-loft, it is far from clear whether Wendla actually wants to have sex.  Although her consistent refusals were downplayed in this performance, leaving the audience to feel that she is unsure, but ultimately convinced, and every-bit the willing partner, there is definitely room for a different interpretation.

Is it possible that the ashes we are left with at the play's end (or the dead leaves, if you will) are as much Melchior's fault as they are the fault of the authority figures who tried to impose an oppressive control?  If so, what has Melchior learned, how has he changed, and what does his promise to remember his friends' dreams really mean?  In this production he doesn't have to change -- not really.  His eyes are opened to horror, and he is certainly less sure and less optimistic, but he can still be single-minded in his righteousness.  He was right, and the world was wrong.  But what if he is as guilty as the lies he hates?  What then?   

Our Melchior didn't face any such questions, and as such, the play itself felt a bit abusive -- like it had violently imposed a viewpoint of the world that I'm not sure I'm wholly willing to accept. 

On a side-note: what's up with creating lighting so dark you can barely see characters' faces for all the shadows?  And a side-side-note: the original Broadway cast included Rachel and Jesse from Glee.