I went to see Spring Awakening. Thank you, Helen so very much. It wasn't what she or I was expecting.
At intermission I was thinking, even saying, “Why was such great talent wasted on such tired themes?” One just can not have all sex is all good and all restraint is all bad – not in today's world. Are 15 year olds today discovering sex? No, I said, they are entering puberty at 7 in a society awash in sex and are jaded by 15. This play is set in and is fighting the battles of 100 years ago. Helen did not agree.
I suspected that she was right. That the play was not about society today, but was allowing older veiwers to replay their own exploration. Exploring the body and its beauty. Recalling the battles fought in the sixties. But, still, the world is not that stick-figurish, Helen.
In the play, adults are only German commandants, sexual repression is bad, all discipline is pictured as abuse, and exploration into sado-masichism is normal.
But then there was the second half. The audience erupted in applause for the “you're fucked” scene and song. Ilse is fucked by the artist colony. Moritz commits suicide. One youth recruits another into homosexual behavior. Melchior is sent to reform school where he is raped. Vindala is dead at the hands of an abortionist. Okay. This is the world I know. It is a world of the consequences of the philosophy espoused in the first half of the play!
In the end Melchoir resolves to remember the dead, be loyal to friends, and to prepare for children. The casts sings a cheerful song of purple summer. Ambiguous, but good enough for me to read that that hope triumphs over the mess through resolve.
Good, I thought. In a day when even very young people find that their sexuality is exploited in the extreme and they are left holding the bag, the old saw that any discipline is necessarily abuse is way tired.
Helen was disappointed. She wanted more of an exploration of sex. We had masturbation, young exploration, incest, two bare bottom intercourse scenes, as well as the art colony and abortion and homosexuality, so I figured I had enough broad exploration of sex.
I was annoyed by the continuous negative mention of the clergy. In the end I was glad I had not seen yet another Caspar Milk Toast. Ever notice how EVERY clergyman is always a wus? But then it dawned on me. We had seen a clergyman preaching just as the intercourse scene was winding up and right before the “you are in trouble” scene and the “you’r fucked” song. He was the voice of conscience. Wow! There is a departing from the stereotype!
Helen was disappointed with the Romeo and Juliet in the graveyard form.
We agreed that the lighting was the best we had ever seen and that set design was intriguing and creative.
Helen wanted some change, some maturation of the characters. Melchior and Vindala didn't have to continue singing their same notes. Why, even the adults might change. There might be an ally – like the priest in Romeo and Juliet.
Thought provoking. In a world where to be for any restraint, any discipline is to be considered inappropriate if not abuse; in a world where children are so awash with sex that freedom itself is a block to having much hope of a family life in which the raising of children is the focus; in a world where innocent exploration is a mean joke – in THAT sort of world, perhaps this play is then read as a revolution against the revolution. We once worried that bureaucracy would become the iron cage of the human spirit. Today instead, we have found that having no restraint is itself the largest bondage. The youth of today, having too little in the way of railings, can not but fly off the rails. Are they really complaining against a parentocracy of fascist dictates – or are they asking where parental responsibility went to – replete with stock in trade German characters – clearly itself politically correct.
Maybe we need a new Spring in the culture. Far be it from me to say we need a return to traditional values. I am FAR too educated for that. Maybe a change in character or a maturation? How about then, a forward move to embracing the beauty of love and of lovemaking in the context of family and caring for children. How about a move forward to the hearts of parents and children being bent toward one another? How about a move forward to lives lived in the context of both birth and death, supported therefore, with the voice of -- conscience. Has ever such a thought dawned in the arts before?
There was no more poignant line in the play that Ilse saying to Moritz, “Don't you see, by the time you wake up, I'll be on the trash heap.” Here is a wake-up call.
