NEW YORK -- It's been a swell season for Broadway musicals. Not only did an impressive 11 new musicals open, but two of the leading contenders for top honors at tonight's Tony Awards ceremony are as unconventional as they are seemingly uncommercial.
Consider the source material alone. Spring Awakening, widely regarded as the frontrunner for best musical, is an adaptation of a formerly banned 19th-century German play about adolescent sexual angst.
Grey Gardens, based on a 1975 documentary, focuses on two of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' reclusive, eccentric relatives, who shared their run-down East Hampton mansion with rabid raccoons and more than four dozen cats.
Furthermore, the creators of both shows have taken bold liberties with their sources, grafting new material onto proven products. In Spring Awakening, composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist / librettist Steven Sater pair a modern rock score with German playwright Frank Wedekind's period play. And in Grey Gardens, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) has crafted a first act that takes place three decades before the documentary.
Granted, these daringly artistic shows got their start on more adventuresome stages off-Broadway. But the fact that both transferred to Broadway, where they've not only stirred up audience interest, but a passel of Tony nominations -- 11 for Spring Awakening and 10 for Grey Gardens -- speaks well for the broadening tastes of the Great White Way.
Here's a closer look.
Awakening'
Along with the risque subject matter, the presentational style of Spring Awakening is audacious. As Sater explains in the notes to the CD, the show's songs don't advance the plot the way songs do in traditional musicals. Instead, they are interior monologues, windows into the adolescent brain.
Most of the actors wear hand-held microphones concealed in their jackets. When their feelings threaten to overwhelm them, they pull out the mikes and vent their emotions in song. No wonder so many young people identify with this musical. Not only are the characters their age, but who hasn't felt like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, acting out fantasies of rock stardom?
So, when Jonathan Groff's Melchior becomes infuriated at his teacher's treatment of a friend, Melchior belts out a defiant, "All That's Known" ("You watch me -- / Just watch me ... And one day all will know.") And when the friend, Moritz (John Gallagher Jr.), is overwhelmed with confusing sexual stirrings, he launches into "The Bitch of Living" and is quickly joined by his equally unsettled classmates.
