What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
ByMySide25
Stand-by Joined: 5/17/04
#1What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/7/06 at 2:09amFrom the reviews I read posted on the boards, nobody has mentioned Spinella's performance. Reading the lengthy interview that's up on the site made me question this. For those who have seen it, what can be said about Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
"Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, 'I knew he loved me when he didn't come in my mouth.'" ~ Andy Warhol
neddyfrank2
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/23/05
#1re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/7/06 at 2:10amHe is good I guess.
gumbo2
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/21/05
#2re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/7/06 at 2:17amI thought he was great. Very funny when appropriate, and then he really was crying at the funeral scene and was responsible for one of the few times in the show when I really had a deep feeling.
#3re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/7/06 at 6:18amFrom someone who saw the Off-Broadway version and now the Broadway version, I can tell you that Spinella and Christine Estabrook are 300% better than their Off-Broadway predecessors.
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
#4re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/7/06 at 6:22am
Broadway Bullet Interview with Stephen Spinella
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
riv
Leading Actor Joined: 3/6/05
#6re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 12:45amhe's really amazing. Both of the adults are. The small subtleties in each different character are so so tiny but they make the roles he jumps in and out of full of life and emotion and you instantly understand the personality of each of them just by reading off of those subtleties. Very, very talented man.
CurtainPullDowner
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/4/04
#7re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 12:51am
He's great.
And some of the young "actors"
should watch and study and be glad they get to perform with such a wonderful Actor.
But I still did not understand that slow motion crying thing in the Funeral scene.
#8re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 12:59amWhat about it did you not understand?
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
CurtainPullDowner
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/4/04
#9re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 1:13am
that it seemed to be in Slo Mo.
#10re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 1:59ami don't think it was in slow motion, though i guess it does kinda seem like that. i think it was the deep pain of his loss and just how he was grieving, what seemed to be in slow motion was actually intense crying
#11re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 11:05am
Spinella is very good in what is an (intentionally) underwritten role. My hypothesis is that the adult actors aren't supposed to strongly register with the viewers.
*****SPOILER*****
I found him very moving in the funeral scene.
I did not care for Estabrook. She overacted like hell. Mary McCann at the Atlantic was much better.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#12re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 11:16am
I'm curious to see them, because I had found McCann and Frank Wood merely adequate when I saw it. I had been hoping that Kate Burton would do the role, however.
eta: Does anyone remember that old show from Nickelodeon called "Welcome Freshmen"? Frank Wood reminded me of the vice principal from that show throughout his performance.
Updated On: 12/8/06 at 11:16 AM
wickedrentq
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/6/04
#13re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 11:19am
Welcome Freshman! I can't remember the guy's name, but I absolutely rememebr the principal-dude, and his face is right in front of me. I feel like I remember him best...though I also remember Walter, Alex, Tara...the principal loved making Walter's life miserable.
Granted, I never saw Wood's performance so this is kind of a pointless response, but I couldn't help myself 
"If there was a Mount Rushmore for Broadway scores, "West Side Story" would be front and center. It snaps, it crackles it pops! It surges with a roar, its energy and sheer life undiminished by the years" - NYPost reviewer Elisabeth Vincentelli
Roscoe
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
#14re: What about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?
Posted: 12/8/06 at 11:26am
"what can be said about Stephen Spinella in SPRING AWAKENING?"
Not very much. He's entirely adequate. As usual.
I've never been a big fan of his.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
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