Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff play a scene from the Broadway musical "Spring Awakening."
The first surprise was that someone decided to make a musical out of Frank Wedekind's 1891 expressionist play about adolescents discovering sex in repressive 19th century Germany. The second was that the show, buoyed by excellent reviews, made an unlikely jump from off-Broadway to on. The third is that this groundbreaking adult musical, with a powerful rock score by Duncan Sheik, is the Tony frontrunner, with 11 nominations.
Tony Outlook: With the big Broadway dinosaurs giving way to small, idiosyncratic shows like this, it looks like Spring Awakening's year.