As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, issues that had long been unspoken, long kept under wraps, began to surface. One, in particular, jumped out to startle people right out of their puritanical/Victorian comfort zones - sex.
The eagerness to talk openly about sex seems to have been particularly pronounced in Germany, where the 1890s saw one of the world's first gay-rights organizations and where a play by Frank Wedekind called Spring Awakening explicitly addressed budding urges among a group of teenage students.
After more than a century of sexual freedoms, Wedekind's play wouldn't raise an eyebrow now, yet the multi-Tony Award-winning musical transformation of it that arrived Tuesday night at the Hippodrome Theatre manages to deliver many a jolt.
After all, a lot of things haven't changed much. Deep down, we're still uncomfortable about masturbation, teenage pregnancy, homosexuality, sadomasochism, abortion - issues that fuel the plot. Parents still put off telling their children the facts of life. Kids still pretend to know more than they do, still tend not to think about consequences.
Spring Awakening, with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and score by Duncan Sheik, is a remarkably original and provocative concept that doesn't shy away from anything.
The most impressive thing about the piece is how cleverly it fuses Wedekind's world with ours. The characters wear costumes that evoke his era, and much of their dialogue fits it as well. But when they pull microphones out of their trim uniforms and break into song, they're definitely speaking our language, right down to the four-letter words, all to the familiar pulse of a rock beat.
There are things that don't quite hold together in the show. Some topics get tossed around so quickly that they don't register with sufficient weight, for example. And the character of Ilse, who gets a pivotal scene in the second act, could use more back story in the first. Also, the use of two gay characters essentially for comic relief in that second act - an awfully old device - seems doubly out of place in a work that is all about taking kids and their needs seriously.
Still, the theatrical strengths of Spring Awakening are formidable. Michael Mayer, who directed the original Broadway production and the current tour, enables the complex picture of human desire to be revealed unflinchingly.
