Fri 2/13-Sun 3/1
Spring Awakening was a left-field hit when it debuted on Broadway in 2006 as a rock musical. It’s based on an 1891 play by German Frank Wedekind, dealing with the repressive sexual attitudes of his time and place, and the tragic results of sexual misinformation and ignorance. It involves rape, abortion, suicide, incest, domestic violence, promiscuity and homosexuality, revolving round a group of teenagers groping in the dark to deal with all of this. Not exactly uplifting stuff, and performances of the play have frequently been censored over the years. But it’s popular with young casts because it confronts a lot of the issues they’re dealing with.
But the Broadway production, with music by pop singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik, won eight Tonys and won the Grammy for Best Original Cast Album. It ran for more than two years and has had two national tours, a revival on Broadway, a couple of London runs, and numerous productions by local theaters such as Near West Theater, Blank Canvas Theatre, Akron’s Millennial Theatre Project and in 2020 an odd production by the Baldwin Wallace university music theatre students that was entirely remote due to COVID.
Now, more than five years later, a new cohort of students, this time from the Oberlin College and Conservatory Music Theater program, gets a crack at the show live at the Beck Center. Victoria Bussert, who, between 2020 and today, moved her successful program from BW to Oberlin, directs the show (she directed the 2020 version too in which the cast acted into their cell phones), with Matthew Webb reprising his musical direction, and choreography by Lauren Marousek. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays @ 7:30pm and Sundays @ 2:30pm. Get tickets here.