Review: SPRING AWAKENING at MAD Theatre Of Tampa

When Jonathan Larson died of an aortic dissection the day before the first preview of Rent, it obviously had a profound impact on the cast.  Here was a show about living your life to the fullest, especially in the face of impending death, and the creator of the musical passes away while the cast is ready to showcase his work for the world.  I’m sure the Mad Theatre of Tampa’s Spring Awakening cast felt the same way when Duncan Sheik, the brilliant composer of Spring Awakening, died last September while the cast was knee-deep in rehearsals. 

Spring Awakening, like Rent, is shrouded with death (while also boasting a pulsating rock score).  Unlike Rent, it’s also shrouded with sexual repression, oppressive authority figures, suicide, and the dangerous experimentation of first love.  I like it better than Rent, mainly because the lyrics aren’t so forced and the ending isn’t a cop-out. 

When I saw the current MAD production during its final weekend, Duncan Sheik’s death hovered over the performance right from the start, when the cast entered the stage, one by one, and sat around it as one of Mr. Sheik’s compositions played.  It’s somber, presentational in all the right ways, and gives massive respect to Mr. Sheik’s brilliance, a brilliance sadly snuffed out too soon.

I’ve seen several stagings of this hit musical, from the original Broadway cast, to freeFall’s cool interpretation, to MAD’s version of it a decade ago.  And the current production, which ended its run on Sunday, October 18th at the Tropical Home Fine Art Gallery in Ybor City, is more immersive than the others, perfect for the old buildings and hip vibe of Ybor. It boasts a fine cast, a live band that sounds spectacular, and a director with a real vision.

Debuting in 2006, Spring Awakening is based on an actual 1891 German play and set in that time period.  What makes it a cool curiosity is its rousing, purposely anachronistic score that seems to carry a certain late-90s alt-rock feel to it (the decade when Mr. Sheik had a hit with the catchy but overplayed “Barely Breathing”). Colliding the two worlds, the Victorian 1800s with the indie music spirit of 100 years later, really works.

With music by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater, Spring Awakening centers on the sad escapades of a group of sexually repressed German adolescents in the late 19th Century.  There’s Wendla Bergman, who has not been taught the facts of life properly by her mother, experiments with the young Melchior Gabor and pays with an unexpected pregnancy and the horrors of a back-alley abortion.  There’s Moritz Stiefel, a troubled young man whose failure in school and ultimate tragedy can be attributed to the bullying of his headmaster and father.  There’s Martha and Ilse, both of whom house dark secrets of sexual abuse, past and present.  There’s the springing of gay love between Hanschen and Ernst.  And there’s Melchior, the central character, whose story builds to a near-suicide where he is saved by the memories of his lost friends and the hope and promise to help build a more open, freer society.

These are young people who are lost in a world of sexuality, still believing in the baby-carrying stork or unable to pronounce “genitalia” correctly.  It’s also a warning, spotlighting what lack of knowledge, sexual repression and no safe abortion access can do to the adventurous youth.

Plot-wise, Spring Awakening can seem a bit over the top, like a PSA from the 1950s about unwanted pregnancies.  But the music fuels it with life, with meaning; these young people are bursting at the seams to explore themselves in an oppressive world.  Like adolescents from every generation, they are chomping at the bit to grow up way too fast.  That’s why the music plays such a pivotal role in the show…it makes the problems of the late 1800s instantly relatable to the current generations.  

MAD Theatre’s cast was superb, with nary a bad seed in the lot.

Owen Stewart was pitch perfect as Melchior, especially in songs like the rollicking “All That’s Known” and the heartbreaking “Left Behind.”  As Wendla, Isabella Falber brilliantly brought out the confusion, the intense sexual yearning, in songs like the pleading “Mama Who Bore Me” and the chilling aloneness of “Whispering.”  Dressed in white like Whistler’s “The White Girl,” she became a standout in a cast of nothing but standouts. 

 Zack Reece as the sneering Moritz reminds me of a young David Patrick Kelly, dark circles under his eyes big as coffee rings. It’s an incredibly strange performance, almost foppish, but so much fun to watch.  He’s constantly in motion, an electric presence, as if he’s hopped up on a dozen Red Bulls.  His meltdowns as he slowly inched toward his tragic fate were off the charts; he’s so strong, we sometimes worried about the performer as much as the character. 

Jessica Hill as Ilsa has a Pre-Raphaelite look to her, which suits the role and the time period to perfection.  Oliver Paul went all out in his masturbatory glory as Hanschen, and Dylan Lauricello was marvelously heartfelt as Ernst. Adrian De La Rosa and Dylan Dames provided incredible harmonies throughout, and Courtney Cooper, Alexandra Pugliese and Alli Lynn Thomas lent splendid support. 

I like that the adult male roles and adult female roles are played by a single person each.  This is where MAD’s Spring Awakening from years ago faltered; they had two people playing the adult male and two playing the adult female, which watered down the parts.  Society as a whole is the culprit here, the oppressive force, and having all the adult parts played by one man and one woman (as it did here) worked so much better.  And the two older actors inhabiting these parts— a powerful Susan Black and a hulking, slithering, reptilian Rick Bronson who’s horrifying in his seething authoritarianism—were wonderfully strong.

Music director Nathan Daughtery did an extraordinary job here.  Songs like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally F*cked" rarely sounded better.  The cast's soaring harmonies often produced chills, and the live onstage band was a dream of an ensemble, with David Estevez and Nathan Daughtery as piano conductors on different nights, and Matthew Morris on guitar, Alex Passault on bass, Ken Shadrake on drums, and Maribeth Radtke and Julie Paradies trading weekends as violinist. 

The technical aspects got the job done, including proper lighting for the scenes and adequate sound quality. The limited art gallery space and the minimal set worked well enough for this show, but there were two things that I had qualms with: 1) Two giant poles blocked several audience members from being able to see the whole show; and 2) Whenever the cast sat on the floor, it became impossible for those viewers not in the first two rows to see what’s going on.  We kept craning our necks, hearing the dialogue and the songs, but with the actors unable to be seen, it was like experiencing a radio play.  This really affected a work like Spring Awakening because one of the key scenes—Melchor and Wendla’s intimate time together—must be staged this way, which unfortunately meant it was only seen by the people sitting up front. This reminded me of that line from the song "The King of Broadway" from The Producers: "You've all heard of Theatre in the Round?  You're looking at the man who invented Theatre in the Square! Nobody had a good seat!"

Director and choreographer Drew Eberhard has mounted one of the best versions of Spring Awakening I’ve seen.  With the actors so close in this quasi-immersive take, it’s hard not to be moved by these talented souls and by the memorably haunting songs.  The story, the music, the imaginative staging all add up to a glorious musical experience, one that I’m sure would have made its late creator proud. In some ways, it acted as a fitting tribute to the incomparable Duncan Sheik. Requiescat in pace.  

MAD’S SPRING AWAKENING ended its run on Sunday, October 18, 2026. Photo credit: Danielle Nicole Photography.