There’s a primal emotional intensity in ASL that doesn’t often make it to stage or screen. Truly impassioned sign language is capable of delivering a deeply affecting emotional intensity that words alone aren’t capable of delivering. This month, Skylight Music Theatre illuminates the overwhelming emotion of the grunge rock musical Spring Awakening with high-intensity sign for a truly unique theatrical experience that is unlikely to be duplicated again in any other format for quite som time. Based on the 1891 German drama of the same name, the 2006 rock musical Spring Awakening follows a class of kids in a private high school coming-of-age in an era of repressive social norms and catatonically stifling societal control over the individual. In the midst of a large ensemble dealing with a great many problems, Wendla and Melchior enter into a dangerous romance that threatens to tear their lives apart completely. Somewhere in the periphery, Melchior’s friend Moritz suffers from intense desires he does not comprehend as scholastic stresses threaten to cave-in around him. The Skylight has done a phenomenal job of staging a fusion between traditional rock musical and ASL drama. Every character is accompanied in some fashion by sign language...except for the towering figures of authority, (played with forceful dominance by Joel Kopischke and Karen Estrada.) When the lead faculty of the school speak, their words are projected larger-than-life against the bare backdrops of the main stage at the Broadway Theatre Center. Everyone else communicates in sign...in AND out of song. In-your-face grunge rock is performed with amplified emotionality as the entire chorus performs the lyrics accompanying infectiously catchy grunge-inspired songs with names like “The Bitch of Living,” “My Junk” and “Totally Fucked.” At the center of it all is the romance between Wendell and Melchior which plays out in tandem between two different sets of actors...Erin Rosenfeld and Caden Marshall sign the drama in the center of the action between the two romantic leads as Emma Knott and Edie Flores speak and sing the action in the periphery in nearly identical period costume. The intensity of everything in the show is deeply rooted in a story that...seems to cover just about every “adult” topic in some way on some level. The musical stops just short of what would be beyond the pale of an NC-17 rating at the multiplex. It’s beautifully vulgar in places as it treads into horrifyingly dark parts of the human soul. The Skylight’s Spring Awakening feels like a once-in-a-lifetime show that really SHOULDN’T be once-in-a-lifetime. The musical theatre format is capable of being so very, very fluid and amorphous. The intensity of dramatic passions then to get drizzled-away in the tedium of contemporary musical theatre. The rock of Spring Awakening keeps it all very powerful and vital throughout while the ASL ground the visual reality of those emotions in something irresistibly palpable. Over-priced mainstream musical theatre can’t do this. It’s SO very cool that Skylight CAN. Skylight Music Theatre’s production of Spring Awakening runs through March 17th at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N. Broadway. For ticket reservations and more, visit Skylight online.
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January 2025
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