Spring Awakening

Tickets and Information

Before one finds the producers of the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening guilty of stunt casting, let me call a witness for the defense. The star witness, as it happens: Weeds' Hunter Parrish -- the cast member in question -- makes a smashing Broadway debut as rebel-with-a-cause Melchior Gabor. It's his excellent work and Duncan Sheik and Stephen Sater's still stunning score that make this innovative piece of theater truly worth a return visit to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

It's not just that the blond-haired, slightly built actor is physically right for the role -- a true "golden boy" whom all the girls lust after and the boys admire. Parrish possesses a surprisingly expressive te[...]

[The following is an updated and revised version of my review of the Atlantic Theater Company's production, which opened on June 16.]

Every generation of unhappy, tortured teenagers has had its own theatrical cri de coeur from Romeo & Juliet to Hair to Rent. But few works probably had the same impact as the original production of Frank Wedekind's 1891 German drama Spring Awakening, which detailed the sexual coming-of-age of that country's teens -- a work so powerful and shocking it is still produced today.

Whether Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's decidedly 21st-century musical version, also titled Spring Awakening, will still be produced 100 years hence remains to be seen. But there's no d[...]