|
 |
ON THE RECORD: Sheik and Sater's Spring Awakening, Plus a New Arlen Collection
By Steven Suskin
24 Dec 2006
This week's column discusses the original cast album of the new musical Spring Awakening and Barbara Fasano's recording of Arlen songs, "Written in the Stars."
****
Spring Awakening [Decca Broadway B0008020]
Standard procedure, when adapting a period piece to the musical stage, is to start by developing a sense of the style of the time and place. Neither Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I nor A Little Night Music used tunes approaching authentic music; but in each case, the songwriters tried to give present-day audiences a flavor of the period (at least to American ears).
In other cases, authors have taken the plot and moved it, as in the case of Ferenc Molnar's "Liliom" (which was transferred from 1900 Budapest to 1870 New England, for Carousel). Even so, the songwriters honored their adopted time period; no jazz saxophones punctuating "If I Loved You."
Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater have radically broken tradition with their new musical Spring Awakening. This is taken from Frank Wedekind's play, written and published in 1891 but apparently not produced until 1906 — and continually, if not surprisingly, censored. (The German playwright, born in Saxony in 1864 [during the American Civil War], was presumably the only lad running 'round the neighborhood with such an unlikely name as Benjamin Franklin Wedekind.)
The libretto of the musical is firmly set in Wedekind's time and day. But instead of constructing their score with flavors of contemporary composers of 1891 — the up-and-coming Richard Strauss or Gustav Mahler, say — Sheik and Sater have literally skipped a century. To quote Sater: "The scenes [are] set in the world of 19th century repression. The songs afford our young characters a momentary release into contemporary pop idiom. Caught in the ongoing dramas of our adolescent lives, we are all nonetheless rock stars in the privacy of our own bedrooms."
Unconventional for traditional musical theatre, yes; it makes for a very different kind of musical, with the songs seemingly bursting away from the text with kinetic fury. Even the most casual Broadway fan has by this point no doubt seen the astounding reviews that Spring Awakening received, almost universally lavishing the show in praise.
The original Broadway cast album, just released on Decca Broadway, handily demonstrates what Sheik and Sater have wrought. The impact is as direct and immediate as that of Hair, which serves as a handy parallel in that we can assess the situation 40 years later (which can't be done, just yet, with Spring Awakening). The score of Hair was not all that revolutionary in 1968; the musical style was readily familiar to anyone who listened to AM radio. For theatre folk accustomed to the likes of Hello, Dolly! and My Fair Lady, though, the Hair score was astounding; not only the vibrancy and variety, but the fact that relatively straight-jacketed musical theatre traditionalists suddenly found themselves humming along with "Let the Sunshine In" and whistling about the age of Aquarius.
Rent, of course, had something of the same effect. The score of Spring Awakening, though, is perhaps more explosive. These songs might well sound foreign to some listeners. Yes, Mr. Sater, there is a generation gap; modern-day adolescents might well be rock stars in the privacy of their bedrooms, but I daresay this doesn't apply to a considerable section of the current-day theatre audience. Even so, the Spring Awakening score seems to be converting, rather than alienating, listeners.
Just as with Hair, I suspect that Sheik and Sater have opened a door. And just as with Hair, the radical style is eased along by the beauty of some of the material. (Try to resist "Blue Wind," why don't you?) The entire cast is equally proficient, although Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele and John Gallagher Jr. stand out by virtue of their solo material. So does Lauren Pritchard, who for reasons of plot has little to do but comes in late with two especially strong and important songs.
Mr. Sheik has produced the recording, and done a whale of a job. His seven-piece orchestration, as played nightly at the O'Neill (expanded from the five used at the Atlantic Theatre), has been augmented for the recording with two violas. (This is the only cast album in memory crediting a separate orchestrator for strings.) Kimberly Grigsby, who has been enlivening Broadway pits since The Full Monty, does a fine job leading the band and the young singer-actors. The CD sports a "parental advisory: explicit content" label. A warning merited, I suppose; but in some ways parental authority — and the lack of it — is the whole point of the affair.
A bit of an uproar arose when the cast album of the current revival of A Chorus Line omitted one track, which purchasers of the CD needed to buy separately on-line. Or not buy, as the case may be. It is interesting to note that nobody seems to be complaining that Spring Awakening also offers a bonus track that need be purchased separately. (In this case, it is composer Sheik singing "There Once Was a Pirate.") One expects that fans of the CD will simply shrug their shoulders and pay the extra ninety-nine cents.
The art of writing for the musical theatre is dying, they've been lamenting since round about 1905. Line up The Light in the Piazza, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening — four remarkably different musicals — on your iPod. Enough said? Continued...
Contact Us | Advertise | Privacy Policy
Send questions and comments to the Webmaster
Copyright © 2008 Playbill, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|