Barrett's Broadway

For a long while, Broadway has been a Disney theme park, and many new musicals are half-hearted exhumations of Hollywood hits. Sondheim was complaining about this in the 1990s.

So it's strange that a "punk rock" play from the 1800s made it into the 2006 season. Tom Hulce and Michael Mayer were sitting together, and Mayer described a German schoolboy, in a little vest, in a pre-Weimar era. Suddenly, the boy removes a mic from his pocket and starts screaming, in rhythm. Hulce called this a "genius theatrical idea" -- and he was right. We feel the same things that German kids felt on pre-industrial hillsides. There is such a thing as universal human experience -- and the mic/lederhosen combo could help to make that point.

Elsewhere, Steven Sater was thinking about Columbine; he was thinking about the pain and alienation kids feel, and about the gulf between teens and adults. (Imagine being Dylan Klebold's parent, missing signs, or telling yourself you've missed signs.)

This is how "Spring Awakening" happened. It's a show about teens with massive problems: private molestation, suicidal thoughts, sexual shame, aimlessness. The teens use wonderful language to say what they can't actually say, in polite company:

Touch me -- just try it....

We'll wander down.....

Oh, God, that's heaven....

And:

God, I dreamed there was an angel

Who could hear me through the wall....

As I cried out, like, in Latin....

This is SO not life...at all.....

Around the teens are clueless adults; some are brusque, and some are well-intentioned but helpless. When seeking help, the teens get no advice, or they get bad advice.

Yeah, you're fucked, all right--

And it's all for spite.

You can kiss your sorry ass goodbye.

Totally fucked--

Well, they mess you up.

Well, you know they're gonna try....

At the center of the show is a botched abortion; a girl dies because she doesn't have access to proper medical care.

It's a treat to me to see writers taking risks. (Not always succeeding -- but swinging for the fences.) Happy (belated) fifteenth birthday to "Spring Awakening"!

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