Navigating those prickly adolescent years can be a real bitch, and bruises can be hard to avoid -- psychological or otherwise. These perennial rocky roads are explored in Stray Dog Theatre's 10th season opener, Spring Awakening, and it's completely absorbing. The original material, Frank Wedekind's play written in 1891, was banned in Germany for its content that includes abortion, suicide, homosexuality, rape and child abuse. The musical adaptation debuted on Broadway in 2006 and won eight Tony Awards, and Stray Dog's production illustrates that the volatility often encountered in the transition from childhood to adulthood doesn't change that much -- regardless of what century you're in.
Set in a provincial 1890's German town, mothers resist telling their daughters about where babies come from, boys are weighed down by the pressure to succeed in their studies and the guilt of wet dreams, and girls are kicked out of their houses because they are being abused by their fathers. This musical examines sexual awakening without being crude, tempering the heavy subject matter with humor, an authentic approach to those anxiety laden teenage years, and then sets it all to an incredible score courtesy of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater. Spring Awakening makes an even more powerful impression inside the intimate space of Tower Grove Abbey.
