Skip to main content

Spring Awakening review – desire and dread in coming-of-age musical

Almeida theatre, London
Rupert Goold’s production of the alt-rock musical has a talented young cast and some striking moments but the songs are often banal

It is audacious of Rupert Goold to stage a flamboyantly morose alt-rock musical about teenage repression and rebellion for a Christmas show. Based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play – banned or censored across the ages – it does not have many fuzzy edges and its staging now feels more refreshing for it.

Set in a provincial German town dominated by a cheerless Lutheranism, the story revolves around adolescents dealing with sexual desire, homosexuality, rape, suicide and back-street abortions. Their teen angst was originally set to song by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, partly sparked by the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, and became a big hit on Broadway in 2006.

At the Almeida, London, until 22 January

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32iTr5k
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Degrees of separation: what connects Seinfeld to Steve Bannon?

From the US sitcom to the far-right rabble rouser, we go down the rabbit hole, thanks to the arrival of Jerry’s show on Netflix Seinfeld All 180 episodes of the 90s’ most misanthropic sitcom have arrived on Netflix, but not everyone is happy. Some viewers have complained that the new transfer puts Jerry Seinfeld ’s show in a different aspect ratio: from an older square format to widescreen … yada-yada … now the picture crops out some sight gags and just seems slightly bizarro . Motion impossible: fallout It’s not the first time modern technology has caused problems. HD TVs can make even visually stunning films look like cheap soap operas, through motion smoothing – a process to reduce blurring (good for on-screen sport). But Tom Cruise was there to save the day: in a slightly awkward 2018 video , he explained how to adjust TV settings to undo this flat fiasco. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mr722c
Post a Comment
Read more