I'm hopped up on a lot right now due to a stomach bug, so I can't write The Great American Novel, but, it's OPENING NIGHT for the Deaf West transfer (and first B'way revival) of SPRING AWAKENING. Congratulations to all involved for getting it to the Brooks! Tickets on-sale through January 24.
"By cleverly pairing deaf actors who are signing with hearing actors who are singing, Deaf West has made the show the most accessible on Broadway, but also forged it into something theatrically exceptional."
I believe it was Tallulah Bankhead who was quoted as saying: "kisses on your opening."
"Noel [Coward] and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night, I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Noel's door, and he asked, 'Who is it?' I lowered my voice and said 'Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?' He answered, 'Just a minute, I'll ask him.'" (Beatrice Lillie)
Standouts among the cast include Krysta Rodriguez as the sad but fierce runaway Ilse and the spirited Ali Stroker, who may be the first wheelchair-bound actress to appear on Broadway. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin makes a cameo as one of the adults, alongside Camryn Manheim ("The Practice" and the crisp-voiced Patrick Page.
The standouts I would mention would be Krysta Rodriguez, Andy Mientus, Austin McKenzie, Daniel Durant, and Treshelle Edmond. The cast altogether is just amazing.
Theatergoers coming to this raw story for the first time will find a musical with even more layers than the production that first seduced Broadway. The addition of sign language encourages a closer look at “Spring Awakening.”
"***** The audience, refreshingly young for Broadway, did a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’, and you know what? So did I." Richard Seff, DCMetroTheaterArts.
And it's out from NYT. Raves. So happy for the team here as I am OBSESSED with this production. Congrats to all involved and may it touch so many other hearts as it touched mine.
One of the great musicals of the last decade was born anew on Sunday, when the thrillingly inventive Deaf West Theater production of “Spring Awakening” opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. Any qualms theater-lovers might have about this being a premature, whiplash-inducing revival — the original closed in 2009, after all — will vanish like frost in strong sunlight when the young cast of both hearing and deaf actors floods the stage...
...Deaf actors may not have the same tools that most actors do, but the gifted men and women in this splendid production achieve the same ideal ends, lighting up the lives of their characters from within, even when the light only reveals the darkness of their confusion, frustration and despair.
NEW YORK -- What were the chances that the next Broadway production to arrive after Hamilton wouldn't prove relatively disappointing?
Pretty good, as it turns out, since that production is Deaf West Theatre's staging of Spring Awakening (***1/2 out of four stars). The musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind's 1891 play, set in Germany and focused on teenagers in a sexually and emotionally repressed culture, was a remarkable achievement in its own right back in 2006. Eight Tony Awards and nine years later, Duncan Sheik's haunting, richly melodic score and Steven Sater's witty, sobering book and lyrics have lost none of their power.
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