Leisure

Spring Awakening shocks and awes in Poulton Hall

April 4, 2013


This weekend, sex and suicide will be simulated on a Georgetown stage. This is not a lurid hook to get you to spend $8 at Poulton Hall. It is a salute to our Jesuit University and its students for their creative and mature handling of the, at times, violent and shocking content of the musical Spring Awakening. The show is masterfully done and displays the full spectrum of Georgetown’s talent from the singing, to the staging, to the orchestration.

With eight Tony Awards to its name, Spring Awakening is the remarkable rock-musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s original 1891 play. Set in a provincial town in Imperial Germany, the musical explores the sexual awakening of teenage girls and boys within the context of their oppressive school system, church, and families. Sexual interest, ignorance, and frustration meet with social and religious repression to both humorous and tragic affect.

Melchior Gabor, played by John Roach (COL ‘13), is the headstrong and charismatic lead. An independent thinker among his peers who at 14 has renounced God and condemned his narrow-minded society for having “no room for critical thought or interpretation,” Gabor undeniably anchors the story. Moreover, Roach gives a masterful performance with an equal measure of sensitivity and self-assurance.

Wendla Bergmann is a fierce and compassionate young girl who, despite her intelligence, dies a victim of personal and systemic social ignorance. Olivia Duff (COL ’16) plays the part with a beautifully clear voice and high-energy earnestness. By the play’s end, her and Gabor’s romantic union will force their community to scrutinize the morality of its own inflexible ethics and reevaluate its practice of social and sexual oppression.

Andrew Walker (SFS ’16) gives another standout performance as Moritz Stiefel, Melchior’s friend and classmate. Walker, with wild hair and blood-shot eyes, animates Moritz with a desperate energy as he acutely suffers the shame and severity with which his school and family treat him. The audience follows these three deeply sympathetic characters along with the rest of the talented cast as they navigate issues of rape, child abuse, homosexuality, suicide, and abortion.

In keeping with the play’s bleak themes, the stage is minimally set. The set, as producer Liz Robbins (MSB ’14) pointed out, is designed almost exclusively in brown tones and reflects the somber challenges faced by the young characters. It also captures the energy of their revolt, as multicolored lights flash across the stage whenever the characters break into song and express the full range of their suppressed thoughts, feelings, and desires.

The musical’s range and intensity of emotion is captured in its evocative score. The music is performed live and is exclusively Georgetown-produced with a pianist, bassist, violinist, and cellist. The entire orchestra and chorus do a superb job, leaving the audience wishing only that they could rock the black box with an even bigger sound. The decibel level does reach an intensity befitting of a rock musical however during the full-chorus rendition of “Totally Fucked.” With the entire cast on stage and channeling perhaps their worst midterm experiences, Robbins points to “Totally Fucked” as her “favorite scene of the production.”

At the conclusion of this emotionally fraught two-hour drama you’d have to be an absolute stoic to not feel shaken and awoken to a new sense of self. The process may challenge and even shock you. However, the musical is not meant to depress or defeat its audience. It encourages us instead to engage life with a degree of confidence and openness that we rarely afford ourselves.



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