From the start, “Spring Awakening” takes us to late 19th century Germany where we go through several intense situations with all the teenage characters. The audience can tell it’s in Germany based on the character’s names, like Wendla, Ilse, Helga, Melchior and Moritz. We know it’s late 19th century based on the clothing and even the language. Wendla’s mother, played by Lynett Vallejo, uses the phrase in bloom‘ to describe puberty, which is definitely not a modern phrase. She even spoke with a German accent. Through the songs and dialogue we quickly learn how naïve and starved for knowledge the adolescents are.
The costume designer, James M. Miller did a great job with all the characters costumes. The girls wore collared white shirts buttoned up to their necks under dresses that went down to their ankles. The boys, who seemed to be in a private, religious school, wore collared shirts with vests on top, pants to their calves, and socks up to where their pants ended. During scenes when they were in class, the boys also had on blazers with ties tucked into their shirts to look like scarves. None of the characters were particularly well dressed, leading me to believe they were all middle-class. The socks the boys wore were all different colored argyle, which lead to a non-uniform look and provided a sharp contrast to their sharp looking ties and blazers, and also led to a less high-class look.
After Moritz, played by Bryson Bruce, committed suicide, all of the characters came to attend his funeral. Although there was no grave or tombstone, it was very apparent it was a funeral because the characters came in wearing black. It was also rainy, as most of them carried black umbrellas. The dark lighting, dark clothing and rainy mood helped contribute to the sadness of the loss of Moritz. Moritz’s friend Melchior, played by Brian Dresner, even had flowers to put on the ground in front of where Moritz’s grave would have been.
The basic set for Spring Awakening remained the same throughout the whole play. There was a backdrop that portrayed an outdoor scene with some trees and hills. This backdrop didn’t go all the way to the top of the stage, though, so we could still see some of the cyclorama behind it. The scenic designer, Jon Drtina, used the cyclorama to portray the color-changing sky. There was also a medium-sized platform that took up most of the center of the stage. Because the set never changed I found it difficult to tell when the characters were supposed to be in a different location and I had trouble figuring out exactly where they were. There were times when Wendla, played by Kristen Thackery, and Melchior were spending time together and I couldn’t tell where they were supposed to be. At first, I thought they were attending some sort of boarding school because they seemed to be inside somewhere after school hours. The same actors played all the adults in the play, so at first I thought Wendla and Melchior had the same mother. It wasn’t until much later I realized the same actors, Lynett Vallejo and Charles Willis, were just playing all the adults, perhaps because all the adults were basically the same people and acted the same way towards the kids. I was only able to differentiate the location of Wendla and Melchior when they specifically said they were looking at the sky or they were out by the river.
Some scenes were easy to differentiate from other scenes. When the boys were in class, they had chairs arranged in a square, resembling a classroom. It was very easy to tell they were in a classroom by their less relaxed dress (they took their blazers off after class), the arrangement of the chairs and the fact that they often were reading books and or writing something down. Other than that, I think the performance could have benefitted from a few extra props to help move the audience from place to place.
Although it was sometimes difficult to tell the location of some scenes, it was always easy to tell the time of day or mood because of the work of the lighting designer, R. Dean Packard. When it was late at night, the cyclorama behind the main backdrop would light up dark blue and spots of white would appear like stars. During the day, the main backdrop was often a much lighter blue with moving white clouds on it.
A particular scene when the lighting stood out to me was during Moritz’s suicide. After he walked off stage with the gun, we heard a gunshot and the whole stage lit up bright red, symbolizing the blood he would have shed. During his funeral in the next scene, the mood was set up by very dark lighting to reflect the depressed mood. The backdrop was also often lit up in different colors. When it was supposed to be autumn, towards the end of the play, it was lit up with reds and oranges. At the end of the play, the backdrop was lit up in brighter greens. This seemed to symbolize the end of winter and the beginning of spring, a new season and a new beginning, tying in the name of the play, Spring Awakening.
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