“Still I know
To trust my own true mind,
And to say: there’s a way through this…”
I truly love theater. Great theater, such a subjective term but still, has the ability to go beyond your surface enjoyments of music and storytelling to your deepest, at time darkest, emotions. When that happens, you and and the music, the lyrics, the stage, the actors, the audience, the meaning are all combined into one brief, fleeting moment of pure energy and feeling. Though most palpable at a live performance, this can carry on in the music of shows. It’s why so many pieces of musical theater resonate with me until they become as cherished as my childhood blankie. I see a lot of theater, some bad, some good. But sometimes, you get that good show with a moment of greatness. And when you get that moment, it is as exhilarating, as terrifying, as moving as it gets.
“Where I go, when I go there,
No more whispering anymore –
Only hymns upon your lips;
A mystic wisdom, rising with them, to shore…”
Spring Awakening, as I saw last night at Boston’s Colonial Theater, is a very good show, by far the best of this season here in Beantown. I’ve enjoyed the music on a superficial basis since the album came out about two years ago and I’ve been impatiently waiting to see the stage show all year. It was what I expected it to be and then completely not what I had anticipated all at the same time. Knowing the music well, I was able to pick up the important lyrics and follow the story perhaps better than a person coming in fresh. This production has remarkable actors, particularly Kyle Riabko as Melchior and Blake Bashoff (Karl!) who portrays the ill-fated Moritz, intricate and symbolic set design, vibrant lighting and at less than two and a half hours is the perfect length for a story so intense. I can see why it won so many Tony’s and I very much enjoyed it. But that’s not why I can’t seem to stop thinking about Spring Awakening.
“Just fuck it – right? Enough. That’s it.
You’ll still go on. Well, for a bit.
Another day of utter shit –
And, then there were none.”
Spoiler Alert!
This musical has a very centralized theme and that is sexually charged teenagers. There are no silly side plots, no erroneous characters. Every action in the story happens as a direct result of sexual awareness. That being said, the scene I keep fixating on, the part which has been virtually haunting me since last night is not the half-naked sex scene – Alyssa, I won’t embarrass you by repeating that line you said last night that made me laugh so hard but in my head I am 🙂 – or the “Totally Fucked” song which was the most rousing number of the show. The scene that has captured me was the suicide scene. Moritz, about to be kicked out of school for failing grades due to his extreme sexual frustration, comes to the end of his rope and decides that the only way out is to stick a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.
“But there’s nowhere to hide from the
ghosts in my mind.
It’s cold in these bones – of a man and a child.
And there’s no one who knows and
there’s nowhere to go.
There’s no one to see who can see to soul…”
I knew it was coming. It’s pretty obvious on the cast recording that Moritz sings this really depressing song “Don’t Do Sadness” and then is missing for much of the rest of the album. I should have been prepared for it and I wasn’t. See, this was probably not the best of times to see Spring Awakening, this week marking the anniversary of an event in my life that is eerily similar to this scene in the show. Watching a character come undone on stage, with such a great performance by Bashoff, was very difficult and emotionally draining. I was sitting there watching and in my head, I was screaming for him to stop, for Moritz to not do what it was so apparent that he was about to do. And then you saw the snap and that’s what I can’t stop thinking about.
“‘Cause, you know, I don’t do sadness –
not even a little bit.
Just don’t need it in my life – don’t want
any part of it.
I don’t do sadness. Hey, I’ve done my time.
Lookin’ back on it all – man, it blows my mind.”
The snap, the moment or line or lyric or look when the character truly decides he’s going to kill himself. You can say it or threaten it all you want but until that snap happens, it’s just an idea and not an action. There’s a moment during the song “Don’t Do Sadness” where the character is faced with a proposition to go hang out with his childhood friend and he turns it down. She runs away and he’s left all alone on stage in dead silence and he questions himself on why he couldn’t go with her. And boom, there it is. The snap. Decision made. All hope lost. The music picks up again, he finishes the song with a new, wild abandon. The song ends and he does it. As I think about this scene more and more, I start to get chills. Because that’s what must happen to anyone who decides to kill themselves, that final, no turning back choice. Not something any of us can understand unless we go through with it. Not something I ever want to understand but since it must have happened to someone who had been so close to me, it’s something that, in a very dark way, fascinates me. And all this from a person pretending. It was horrific and amazing at the same time. Great theater has the ability to go beyond your surface enjoyments of music and storytelling to your deepest, at time darkest, emotions. That moment was great theater.
“The talks you never had,
The Saturdays you never spent,
All the ‘grown up’ places your never went.
And all of the crying you wouldn’t understand.
You just let him cry…”
There’s obviously much more to Spring Awakening than what I’ve put here. I would definitely recommend the show and this cast especially. I think this is one of those that if you are able to attach to it, you’ll get something different from it than I did. If it doesn’t speak to you, well that’s part of theater too.
And now, just for fun:
“Yeah, you’re fucked all right – and all for spite.
You can kiss your sorry ass good-bye.
Totally fucked. Will they mess you up?
Well, you know they’re gonna try.”
Three Months\' Time 