tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post3690291439334726690..comments2024-01-07T06:59:04.212-05:00Comments on The Playgoer: Spring Awakening and SuccessPlaygoerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02994724588504353485noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-85105498994332213162007-12-31T19:07:00.000-05:002007-12-31T19:07:00.000-05:00I love this quote from New York Magazine's Year in...I love this quote from New York Magazine's Year in Theatre 2007 List.<BR/><BR/># 7 BEST FAIRY-TALE ENDING<BR/>Spring Awakening<BR/>When the year started, Spring Awakening was a critics' darling facing long odds for survival. Did an audience exist for a pop-musical version of a 116-year-old German play about hormonal teens featuring onstage nudity, simulated masturbation, S&M, and the dirty words they don't air on MTV? As the year ends, Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's show is a runaway hit: the winner of eight Tony awards, including Best Musical, a crossover phenomenon (compliments of a Gap ad featuring the eye-candy cast), with box-office momentum that Jonathan Franzen's bitchy tirade against the adaptation couldn't impede. The success of this gutsy indie-rock show proves that the 21st-century musical doesn't just live: It kicks ass.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-2909173499409323112007-08-31T11:38:00.000-04:002007-08-31T11:38:00.000-04:00I love this Franzen piece. And Garrett, your firs...I love this Franzen piece. And Garrett, your first comment here really hits the nail on the head. Its not that Spring Awakening the musical is a bad show. Its just that its not really Spring Awakening. That's why (as a lover of the original) I was really disappointed. And that's also why if I went back with a better understanding of what I was in for, I would probably enjoy the show a lot more.<BR/><BR/>The hardest for me was the Ilse/Moritz scene, which is really heartbreaking in the play. Its converted to a 60 second sketch with a (somewhat unrelated) song. Eesh.Roccohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07257263438117207663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-19063147179610991422007-08-31T10:09:00.000-04:002007-08-31T10:09:00.000-04:00Thank you for the HOT Review link, Moritz--or shal...Thank you for the HOT Review link, Moritz--or shall I say, Herr Steiffel.<BR/><BR/>I like what Ms. Garrett (no, not me--and not Charlotte Rae either) has to say. Her elucidation and analysis of the "rape" scene is the best I've read, and informative. The quotation from the actress is especially revealing: "these two characters were very much in love with each other" is exactly where the show goes wrong--or at least parts company with Wedekind. The true tragedy of SA (subtitled, btw, "A Children's Tragedy") is that Wendla dies and Melchior's life is ruined by a no-doubt ten second sexual intercourse with no love at all, but lots of confusion, in it.<BR/><BR/>As the musical's insertion of Wendla's "ghost" into the ending indicates, though--it is essential, inherent to the form of The Broadway Musical (conventionally, at least) for the "love story" to be central, the source of all conflict and resolution. Because Wedekind didn't really have one (because he seems to think teenagers incapable of anything like "love") the play had to be given one.<BR/><BR/>And that's how a chilling rape scene becomes a luscious make-out Act One finale.Playgoerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02994724588504353485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-91389570463581393092007-08-31T08:15:00.000-04:002007-08-31T08:15:00.000-04:00Interesting point, printemps. I think that's what...Interesting point, printemps. I think that's what Franzen is saying, too. How could something written in 2007, using the same characters and situations written in 1891, been so much less truthful, probing, complex, upsetting? If you stop and think about it, it says a lot about our moment. Either commercialism or psychological denial seem the most logical culprits. These creators have a lot to answer for.<BR/><BR/>Here's another interesting take from a Barnard professor: http://www.hotreview.org/articles/rudeawakening.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-83796488414971893192007-08-30T20:53:00.000-04:002007-08-30T20:53:00.000-04:00interesting romeo and juliet comparison, but I wou...interesting romeo and juliet comparison, but I would reply that that the creators of West Side Story took more of a risk by updating the show and making it topical and urgent: puerto ricans were immigrating to the US, immigration and racial politics are hot-button, morally challenging issues. The creators of Spring Awakening, on the other hand, conservatively retain the 19th century german facade and water down the challenges of the original Spring Awakening. Franzen argues that the modern teenager isn't challenged or moved by watching spring awakening whereas your teenager in 1959 watching West Side Story is going to have to think about pre-Civil Rights america, race and class. if you translate a play you're going to know it really well, almost too well, but this doesn't smell like an attack on all adaptations. a translation, after all, is an adaptation. I'm interested in Franzen's approach using language in his translation. teenage america is where most of our slang begins, after all, so there are many choices out there as to what sort of tone he could give a translation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-6213085947111262632007-08-30T18:07:00.000-04:002007-08-30T18:07:00.000-04:00Fair point, I must say.I agree about the whole Fra...Fair point, I must say.<BR/><BR/>I agree about the whole Franzen/Oprah episode, btw. My problem there was that Franzen had no problem buying into, NY Times media coverage as somehow above commerce, while believing that distancing himself from Oprah's book club was rising above it all.<BR/><BR/>But while his Spring Awakening critique is extreme, to be sure, as a fellow lover of the play I think it has value. He's articulating--again in xtreme form (and I quote him at length not all out of admiration, but almost gawking)--what many of who love the play thought of the musical.<BR/><BR/>That said, I agree with you that there's no reason the two versions can't peacefully co-exist. The musical is simply a different entity and I accept it as that, and see its value as a "popularization" of a twisted fin-de-siecle classic. So I wouldn't want to obliterate it as much as Franzen does.<BR/><BR/>But... THAT said... (trying not to be too even handed here) what appeals to me most about Franzen's argument is how our art of today shrivels at the daunting moral challenges of the art of bygone eras. Our need for happy endings and likeable characters (Franzen doesn't even touch on the Sp Awakening ending changes) seems to get more and more desperate. La Boheme's Mimi dies, but Rent's lives, for instance. Even those old 19th century melodramas were more willing to look deeper into the abyss than our mainstream culture.<BR/><BR/>But, hey, I guess I'm a bit of an elitist, too.Playgoerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02994724588504353485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-39774748300010288992007-08-30T17:30:00.000-04:002007-08-30T17:30:00.000-04:00I have to disagree about the value of this Franzen...I have to disagree about the value of this Franzen piece--I don't think there's much going on in it other than his unremitting sour snobbery, the native condescension that so many novelists have towards theater, and a kind of self-willed refusal to understand that a contemporary rock musical version of "Spring Awakening" does not obliterate, deface or otherwise harm the original work of art. It's a bit like reading a long rant about how West Side Story vulgarizes Romeo & Juliet and isn't it disgusting that teenagers like it and is this what passes for art these days and popular culture defiles everything it touches and so on and so on. This is not, to me, an interesting cross-cultural conversation--it's a novelist playing at being a theater critic. Didn't the Oprah experience teach him that whenever his first instinct is to express contempt for something, it might be better to wait for his SECOND instinct?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com