Over the course of a year, the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire produces seven different shows, including two chidlrens shows, for their audience, a jam-packed calendar that demands military scheduling rigor and minimal rehearsal time. This year, the 40-year-old theater is adding an eighth show to that burgeoning calendar. But when “Spring Awakening” opens Jan. 14, it won’t just mark a change in the schedule. It could herald a new era for the Marriott and a significant change in the way the theatre does business.
The musical by composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist/book writer Steven Sater “wouldn’t survive” a regular two-month run at the Marriott says Artistic Director Aaron Thielen. “We’d never put a show like this in our subscription series. There would be major pushback from our loyal subscribers,” he says. But by giving it an abbreviated, three-week run, Thielen hopes to reach a demographic that wouldn’t otherwise make the trip to Lincolnshire.
“This could be the start of something new for us, something that reaches people we don’t speak to with our regular programming,” he says. “It’s not a judgment on people who don’t care for this kind of show. But here’s the thing: You’ve got to adapt and grow. If you don’t, you die. And yeah, that sounds dramatic, but there’s some truth to it. I love our subscribers, obviously. But we need to continually be reaching new people.”
In addition to “Spring Awakening,” Thielen cites “Rent” and “American Idiot” as the “kind of show” that couldn’t sustain a full run at the Marriott. “Spring Awakening” features a hard-driving rock score and a coming-of-age story that deals graphically with incest, abortion, masturbation and suicide. The musical’s signature show-stopper has a title you can’t print in the mainstream media.
Set in early 20th century Germany and based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind, “Spring Awakening” focuses on a group of students struggling to survive adolescence in a world that leaves them battered emotionally, physically and sexually. And if all that sounds relentlessly grim, rest assured that it isn’t. Done properly, “Spring Awakening” radiates joy, humor and triumph. Amid the profanity and the nudity and the tragedy, there is transcendence in the 8-time Tony winner.
When “Spring Awakening” debuted on Broadway in 2006, Marriott’s leading lady Eliza Palasz was barely a teenager. After playing the cast recording so incessantly she broke the CD, her parents agreed to take her to see the show.
“My mother actually took the CD away from me because I wouldn’t stop playing it. I guess I got pretty annoying,” recalls Palasz, a 2015 Northwestern University grad who grew up in Seattle. “But she eventually took me to see it, and we talked about it — all the themes in it — a lot. My parents were great in that way; they didn’t put a lot of limits on what I was exposed to in music or theater or books and movies, but they always made sure we talked about it. If I wanted to see an R rated movie, they were like, ‘OK, but we’re coming with you and we’re going to discuss it after.'”
That’s the polar opposite of the upbringing of Palasz’s character, Wendla. Wendla is literally kept in the dark when as a senior in high school she asks her mother to explain where babies come from. The funny/heartbreaking scene shows Wendla’s mother (Hollis Resnik) agreeing to talk, but only if Wendla hides her eyes. The teen is so desperate for information she crawls under a skirt. There, in isolated, stuffy darkness, she waits for an answer. None comes.
“She’s a smart girl,” Palasz says of Wendla, “but nobody will answer her questions. She’s a young woman, but her parents treat her like a small child.”
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Ben Barker plays Wendla’s not-as-smart schoolmate Moritz. Like Wendla, Moritz is starving for information, deeply troubled by the profound changes of both body and mind that mark adolescence and wildly anxious to please his strict, distant parents. His story unfolds as a savage cautionary tale about the destiny of children who grow up feeling unloved, pigeonholed and ridiculed even within the supposed safety of their own family.
“All Moritz wants is to not disappoint his parents. And failing that, he wants to escape,” says Barker, a 2014 Northwestern grad. “Moritz is fighting both the system he’s in at school and the society that surrounds him. But he’s trapped, locked into the role that adults have assigned him.” That role ultimately crushes Moritz, destroys his parents and leaves the town reeling.
For 2008 Wheaton Warrenville South grad Brian Bohr, “Spring Awakening” provides the chance to dig into a character type he’s not played previously. Bohr was bitten by the theater bug early. “I didn’t make the middle school basketball team,” he recalls. “My mother told me I had to find something else to do with myself so I tried out for a play. It was the most fun thing I had ever done in my life.”
In high school, Bohr performed in “Les Miserables”, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” “Grease” and “The Wizard of Oz.” He made his professional debut shortly after graduating from Northwestern in 2012. In “Spring Awakening,” he plays Hanschen, a young man who isn’t shy about using his killer good looks to get what he wants from his peers.
“The thing that I love about this show is how real, and human it is. It’s about finding love, and compassion and learning acceptance,” Bohr says.
Bohr’s parents are among his biggest fans. “I don’t come from a family that’s very artsy,” he says. “So in some ways, they don’t always get what I’m doing. Or trying to do. But they are incredibly supportive. They love opening nights. They love coming to see me.”
That kind of acceptance, says Bohr, is crucial to the core themes that underpin “Spring Awakening.”
“The show might be set a century ago, but the pressures the kids feel, the pain, the loss, the desires — all of those things are relevant today,” he says.
If the world surrounding Wendla, Moritz and Hanschen is harsh, the music that defines the show is not. Sheik’s score is extraordinary, from the weeping violin strains that open the show to the roaring, defiant rock that fuels the plot.
Other than a couple of tours that have passed through town, “Spring Awakening” has never been seen locally. “I couldn’t really tell you why nobody’s tried it I before here,” says Thielen. “Ask me after we close, and maybe I’ll have an answer. Obviously, I believe there’s an audience for it. And I’m hoping we find them.”
Contact: 847-634-0200; www.MarriottTheatre.com
‘Spring Awakening’
When: Jan. 14–31
Where: Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire
Tickets: $50