Challenge can bring out the best and the worst, right? For an example of the best, look to the collaborative effort that allowed Baldwin Wallace University to present its traditional fall musical despite rigorous campus-wide rules designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Spring Awakening, a now-classic Broadway show about youth in a bygone age, premiered everywhere at once via video streaming Thursday, November 19. Locals may recall the show was at the Beck Center in 2012 also directed by Victoria Bussert and featuring top BW students. This year it was in our living rooms.
So, a big hats-off to Director Victoria Bussert who, along with music director Matthew Webb, choreographer Gregory Daniels and casting director Colleen Longshaw Jackson, staged, arranged and assembled a musical. And they did it safely during our other current distraction, the 2020 pandemic.
With music by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater, Spring Awakening is based on a late19th-century play by Frank Wedekind. The story centers on youthful frustration and confusion for teens navigating their sexuality. Their problem isn’t helped by their closed society’s insistence on certain behaviors and on their parents’ refusal to tell them more about their awakening bodies. Talk about a bubble!
The show, filmed on cell phones, came together via the craft of Webb, who mixed dancing sequences with separately recorded songs and conversations and then turned them into a single production. This works pretty well except when lovers meet. The viewer has to imagine they are really side-by-side and not being filmed (as they were) separately.
Some dancing was done on stage, some outside, but all the dancers wore masks. I missed the percussive thumps when the boys got rowdy in school, but safety first. There were racy scenes, as in the old Beck production, but this time sex was expressed solo, in private.
A major component, and one that made this patchwork (in the best sense) production a pleasure was the tremendous talent of over a dozen BW students who conveyed story and feelings through numbers wistful, such as “Mama Who Bore Me” and rebellious, such as the energetic ensemble number “The Bitch of Living.”
Two separate casts alternated performances over four nights, with only The Adult Woman (Laura Welsh Berg) and The Adult Man (Lynn Robert Berg) in both. The dynamic Berg duo presented awesome versions of awful parents, teachers, and other adults.
The set might have been the easiest part because BW boasts several massive (Berea sandstone) buildings that shout “19th-century institutions.” The BW campus, the nearby parks and a real graveyard were also used as sites for students to emote, meet and dance through.
Seeing the show from home was overall a good experience. The few hiccups caused by poor reception were due to my own inexperience with streaming a limited production (no “do-overs”). I can’t say the ticket processors didn’t warn me. We were instructed as follows:
“While watching the show on a cell phone or tablet may be easiest, the best viewing experience is likely to be via a smart TV with web access or a computer or laptop connected to a quality sound system. Remember that this is like watching a live show; you are not able to pause, rewind or fast-forward the performance.”
Bottom Line: An impressive and ingenious example of “the show must go on.” Bravo to BW, but I can’t wait until next year when I hope life will be normal. I miss the magic of being in the room when it happens.