Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006

Spring Awakening

Wendla is a teenager so sheltered that she finds herself pregnant before she even learns the facts of life; Melchior is a rebellious hunk whose radical ideas get him thrown into a reformatory; Moritz a geeky class loner driven to suicide. The names are foreign, the social milieu formalistic and remote. But when these kids — drawn from German author Frank Wedekind's once-scandalous 1891 play — grab microphones and unload their angst through Duncan Sheik's vibrant rock songs (with titles like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally F-----"), they make Spring Awakening the boldest and most contemporary musical on Broadway.