During my New York trip I set aside all of Saturday afternoon and evening for Broadway shows. I had several shows that I was interested in seeing, so I made my decision based on the availability of cheap student tickets, and I ended up get tickets to a matinée of Spring Awakening and an evening show of Rock 'n' Roll. Although I hadn't planned it that way, it worked out perfectly to give me a taste of both sides of the spectrum, with Spring Awakening representing the enthusiastic energy of the musical and Rock 'n' Roll was a thought-provoking drama.
Although it was clearly a Broadway musical, one of the things that I really enjoyed about Spring Awakening was that it did make some ambitious and unexpected choices. Using rock music to express the angst of 19th century German teenagers might have seemed painfully anachronistic, but the music helped the show to tap into the highs and lows of adolescence in a way that contemporary audiences can relate to quite readily. My primary impression of the show was its incredible energy. The actors had a very believable youthful enthusiasm, and the show did a great job of presenting the difficulty of achieving a balanced sense of self when your whole world is being distorted by the changes of puberty.
Unfortunately, the show's energy could not make up for the fact that all of the music meant there wasn't enough time to give significant psychological depth to the characters. I'm not familiar with the play on which it is based, but I suspect that the broad strokes are the result of trying to translate the emotional depth of a play into the medium of a musical. In spite of its weaknesses, Spring Awakening had more than enough passion and vitality to keep me thoroughly engaged and entertained.
Rock 'n' Roll had a very different feel, which makes sense considering that it came to New York from London and still has most of the original West-End cast. As I have learned to expect from a Tom Stoppard play, it was thought-provoking and had real heft, but it also had an emotional side to balance the intellectual discussions of the mind, music, and communism. Unfortunately, it also felt like a play more suited to a British rather than American audience, and I could tell that some of the audience members were almost angry at the fact that communism was being discussed by sympathetic characters who were not painting it as an ideology of pure evil.
My perception may have been skewed by the fact that on this night I had the misfortune to be in the most poorly behaved audience I have ever seen. People were getting up and trying to move to better seats during much of the first act, in some cases not even waiting for a scene break to do so, and at one point a cell phone started ringing and just kept ringing until after about the third or fourth ring, the actors simply paused the action, at which point the offender finally realized what a disruption it was and silenced it. It was real shame to have such an awful audience, because the play itself was remarkable in its subtlety and the depth of its passionate characters.
Unfortunately, the show's energy could not make up for the fact that all of the music meant there wasn't enough time to give significant psychological depth to the characters. I'm not familiar with the play on which it is based, but I suspect that the broad strokes are the result of trying to translate the emotional depth of a play into the medium of a musical. In spite of its weaknesses, Spring Awakening had more than enough passion and vitality to keep me thoroughly engaged and entertained.
Rock 'n' Roll had a very different feel, which makes sense considering that it came to New York from London and still has most of the original West-End cast. As I have learned to expect from a Tom Stoppard play, it was thought-provoking and had real heft, but it also had an emotional side to balance the intellectual discussions of the mind, music, and communism. Unfortunately, it also felt like a play more suited to a British rather than American audience, and I could tell that some of the audience members were almost angry at the fact that communism was being discussed by sympathetic characters who were not painting it as an ideology of pure evil.
My perception may have been skewed by the fact that on this night I had the misfortune to be in the most poorly behaved audience I have ever seen. People were getting up and trying to move to better seats during much of the first act, in some cases not even waiting for a scene break to do so, and at one point a cell phone started ringing and just kept ringing until after about the third or fourth ring, the actors simply paused the action, at which point the offender finally realized what a disruption it was and silenced it. It was real shame to have such an awful audience, because the play itself was remarkable in its subtlety and the depth of its passionate characters.
