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My High School

 I first saw "Spring Awakening" while I was in my early twenties; I had endured a Catholic education in which my teacher, a deacon, made a point of observing that homosexual intercourse was a problem. "Two men can have a close friendship, but all articles of clothing must remain in place...."


With "Awakening," it was immediately clear that something seismic had occurred. 

There is the band on the stage, and blackboards, and several members of the audience. Lea Michele appears in a white gown and recites a kind of prayer:

Mama, who bore me--
Mama, who gave me--
No way to handle things--
Who made me so sad.
Mama, the weeping--
Mama, the angels--
No sleep in Heaven...
Or Bethlehem...

What is she talking about? Having lived through her own Christian education, Lea Michele's Wendla feels chaotic, unnerved. She seems to identify with Mary, exhausted, wandering through Bethlehem, visiting unfriendly innkeepers at overpacked inns. (Later, the unwed Wendla will become pregnant.)

"Awakening" follows one passage from childhood to adulthood. The hero, Melchior, observes a bright friend's descent from confusion to despair. (In high school, I had a classmate who committed suicide; it was rumored that he had hanged himself with a dog leash.) ...As he struggles to make sense of his pain, Melchior realizes that the "adults" around him are in fact lost. They are playacting. In one of the show's more beautiful (and overlooked) moments, Melchior addresses a mourning father, as the father stumbles through a graveyard:

You fold his hands and smooth his tie--
You gently lift his chin.
Were you really so blind and unkind to him?
Can't help the itch to touch, to kiss--
To hold him once again.
Now to close his eyes--never open them...

I've always admired this particular string of verbs: fold, smooth, lift, help, touch, kiss, hold, close.

A writer tries to say the unsayable. The "rudeness" of "Spring Awakening" came as a shock: Here were teenagers in a mainstream theater, worrying that their semen would make them go blind, recalling the precise details of an incestuous assault. ("He says, oh, God, the loving, ain't it good tonight? Child, the Lord won't mind...")

I am sad about the loss of Duncan Sheik. I generally dislike musicals, and Sheik wrote one that I liked (and still like). I can't say how many hours I have spent with the soundtrack of "Spring Awakening."

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