Spring Awakening

Music by: Duncan Sheik
Book and lyrics by: Steven Sater
Based on play by: Frank Wedekind
Directed by: Michael Mayer
Choreography by: Bill T. Jones
Cast: Frank Wood, Mary McCann, John Gallagher Jr., Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele, Christopher Clark, Michele Cobham, Lilli Cooper, Chris Garneau, Jared Goldstein, Brian Johnson, Lauren Pritchard, Jonathan B. Wright and Remy Zaken.
Synopsis: Adapted from Frank Wedekind's controversial masterpiece about a dozen young people and how they make their way through the thrilling, complicated, confusing and mysterious time of their sexual awakening.
 

What the critics had to say.....

CHARLES ISHERWOOD of the NEW YORK TIMES says �A fresh breeze of true inspiration blows steadily through this ambitious if imperfect show. Imprinted on the memory is the happy sensation of having witnessed something unusual and aspiring, something vital and new.�

JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ of NEW YORK DAILY NEWS says "If the production, guided with gusto - and endless energy - by director Michael Mayer, isn't entirely successful (it's not), it's at least partly so because most of the characters remain too sketchy for too long. It's hard to know a whole lot, or for that matter care a whole lot, about them."

MICHAEL SOMMERS of the STAR-LEDGER says "Thoughtfully staged, throbbing with sensual songs, 'Spring Awakening' vividly expresses adolescent angst then and now."

SAM THIELMAN of NEWSDAY says "Director Michael Mayer has put together a show with no real purpose, and it shows. The fact that his young actors sing songs like the sloppily written abused-child ballad "The Dark I Know Well" with such sincerity seems like a joke at their expense, and a poor one."

MICHAEL KUCHWARA of the ASSOCIATED PRESS says "There is an unnerving intensity to the youngsters in this show that both Sheik, with his hard-driving but often melancholy score, and Sater, with his spare, direct lyrics, capture perfectly. Adventurous, thoroughly compelling musical."

DAVID ROONEY of VARIETY says "Cast features some distinctly Teutonic-looking faces that seem to belong to another time, especially the boys. That aspect and others fuel the sense here of a fascinating collision between the 19th and the 21st centuries."

External links to full reviews from newspapers

New York Times
New York Daily News
NewsDay
Associated Press
Variety