By Jeffrey D. Driggs
As an employee of Westminster College of Salt Lake City, I have seen many productions of the theater department here, and none have failed to impress me with the quality of the performances and the innovative and dramatic interpretations of the directors. This month’s production of Spring Awakening, directed by Michael Vought, is no exception.
Spring Awakening—a 2006 musical by playwright and lyricist Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik—tells the stories of teenage schoolboys in 1890s Germany and their interactions with the girls their age. It is based on a play from that era by Frank Wedekind. The advisory of “mature content and language” printed on posters and the playbill of Spring Awakening should not be taken lightly. This show is about the sexual discoveries of these youth, in various incarnations and with various consequences. It is also, as Sater put it, an indictment of adulthood. “Of parents, teachers, and a clergy so invested in their social prestige that they will sacrifice even their children to protect it.”
The ensemble has a strong leader in Chase Palmer, perfectly cast as brilliant bad boy and town heartthrob Melchior Gabor. Palmer has the enthusiasm and the vocal range to draw the focus in every scene and number he performs in, as well as the talent to make his character totally believable. Some people act well: Palmer is one of those rare few who become the character, through even the curtain call.
Likewise, Alec Kalled, playing Melchior’s friend Moritz Steifel, does an outstanding job communicating his character’s insecurities, worries, hopes, and fears. Steifel goes through perhaps the largest range of emotions in the show, and Kalled masterfully portrays them all.
All the performers can sing well, as befitting a musical put on at Westminster College, where the theatre arts program can partner with the outstanding Florence J. Gillmor School of Music. Many of the actors are in the school’s a cappella group, Sugar Town, or in the college’s premier vocal group, the Westminster Chamber Singers, which will be performing in Carnegie Hall later this spring.
The singing voices of the schoolgirls are sweet and melodic, particularly those of Megan Sparrer, playing Melchior’s love interest, Wendla Bergman, and Ame Plummer portraying young Martha Bessell. I was just disappointed that the women’s voices didn’t have the strength and the carrying power as did the male singers in the cast. Perhaps the women were hampered a little by a few microphone glitches. Fortunately, however, none of the singing is overpowered or drowned out by the live music, which could have been an issue. Abby Maxwell, playing Ilse Neumann, is the exception among the women, however—a voice as beautiful as it is strong when she belts out her numbers with an amazing power.
Eli Unruh, Nathaniel Woolley, Sydnie Schwartzwalder, Jordan Reynosa, and Evan Leeds play other youth in the school and village, each with their own brief moments of humor or pathos, and all can be counted on for their singing and dancing skills.
The first thing that strikes audiences, when entering the Jay Lees “Courage” Theatre for this production, is the live seven-piece orchestra, perched on a platform built over the stage. The stage (Set Designer Nina Vought) is stark—almost bare except for that platform, under which the actors enter and exit, and two large staircases leading up to it, which are rolled around and reconfigured for various entrances and scenes. The show is staged in the rock musical style of such classics as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, where the entire cast occasionally stops and stares forward to sing straight to the audience, and where chorus members change clothes onstage to switch into and out of various characters.
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The bare stage makes possible one other innovative touch that Vought employed when casting the show. Westminster theatre student Melissa Salguero, who plays Thea, is in a wheelchair, but fully participates in the singing and dancing, zipping her electric chair around the stage in time with the rest of the cast in intricately designed (by choreographer Daniel Charon) dance numbers. The whole cast performs these numbers well, with no awkwardness or stumbling as Salguero’s chair weaves in and out and stops on a dime along with the rest of them, singing their hearts out.
As I mentioned, the show is based on a German play from the 1890s, and Costumer Spencer Potter has done an excellent job recreating that era, with the boys’ school uniforms and the girls’ dresses and petticoats, all in muted colors and layered styles that hearken back to that time and place.
While his original director’s notes are printed in the playbill, Vought has penned a last-minute addition to them, slipped into the program. In it, he observes that the leaders of the Never Again movement, survivors of the shootings at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School just last month, are putting on Spring Awakening there this spring. In fact, the musical was written in response to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. The timeliness of this production is almost frightening.
What are the responsibilities of parents and other adults to make sense of this world for our children, to make it safe? What can we expect from the youth if we don’t prepare them for what lies ahead? These are some of the hard questions this show poses, and one answer it gives comes in the title of the show-stopping number from the second act: If we fail, we are leaving them “Totally F—ed.”
Westminster College presents Spring Awakening, by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik
March 1-3, 8-10 7:30 PM
Jewett Center for the Performing Arts, Westminster College, 1700 S 1300 East, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105
Tickets: $10
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Spring Awakening Facebook Event
Photos by Donnie Bonelli
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