I love that show, just not the shitty Broadway version...

Yesterday on a recruiting trip to the University of Michigan, I outed myself to a coworker. "Yes," I told her, "I'd like to eventually direct professionally."

She had no idea, but they rarely do even though the signs were all there from the very beginning. Chief among the telltale signs is my skepticism of quality on Broadway. After she mentioned to me that she saw and loved, loved, loved Mama Mia, I could not stop myself.
Kristen, I just think musicals like that are a waste of my time.

to which the response is:

But they're so much fun! How can that be such a waste of time?

...and then I have to get into the shit. On the bright side, I've become much better at explaining my perspective on theater. Hopefully that will continue to clarify. A byproduct of these conversations is a list of musicals about which I can not only say "I know exactly why these people are signing" but that it moved me. In yesterday's conversation with Kristen, the ones which came out included Cabaret and Chicago - both of which I find brilliantly structured.

I also brought up Spring Awakening. After seeing the Broadway production, originally produced by the Atlantic Theater Company, I had mixed feelings. I appreciated that the musical took a risk and did something generally new to Broadway. While the lyrics were mostly incomprehensible, and the structure made no sense given the added "finale," I liked the teen sex, they gays on stage and the catchy tunes.

Then Hannah, who was my theater buddy that night, mentioned that the sex scene written by Wedekind was supposed to be full on rape. My heart sank. Chickens. I understand: hockey moms and Joe-6-Packs out there would be scandalized by any full on rape regardless of the context...but isn't that a good thing? Why should a director/adapter have to protect the audience from confronting significant questions brought up by the play? There are multiple answers here, but my guess is that the majority of it lies in Broadway economics.

I went back and read the play. It's hilarious, both despite and because of scenes like Melchior's beating Wendla, or his raping her later on. In my opinion, Wedekind doesn't want you to take anything he wrote seriously. Jonathan Franzen, the translator to my edition, mentions in the preface that there is no intelligible way to judge Wedekind's characters other than through the aesthetic and the comic. To that end, Franzen points out that there is no standard of "cosmic justice" - exemplified by the fact that rapist Melchior remains intact and lovable quirky characters like Wendla and Moritz end up destroyed. Instead, the action of the play is through and through casual and amoral.

But that makes it funny. In not committing to the original intent, turning the rape consensual, making Wendla's beating completely unfunny. Franzen mentions all of this in his preface. Surprisingly, though, he leaves out how the musical destroys the homosensual moment between Hansy and Ernst by making Hansy a predator and Ernst other an unsuspecting but willing victim.

In retrospect, I can't decide if the Broadway adaptation of Spring Awakening was on the whole more damaging in its deadliness than a run of the mill feel good musical like Mama Mia. At least with a show that saccharine, you don't expect to be moved by anything substantive. With Spring Awakening, the audience is tricked into thinking it is seeing something substantive and honest when in it's really just a bunch of florescent installed around a heavy handed canned dosage of stereotypical teen angst.

So many missed opportunities...