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branquignoleFirst things first: I already wrote a post about the Spring Awakening show I saw on January 14 over on my German blog, and I usually leave it at one post about a show, except when the cast is very different. But last night's show was so incredibly amazing that I wanted to type up something a bit more thorough than last time. Since I was already acquainted with the plot, the characters and the actors, it was easier to take in more details which added to the overall experience. And then there's also the fact that there was one of the cast's cabarets after the show, so there's also something completely new to add to this.
The first thing you really notice about the English Theatre is that it's unbearably warm in there. (I don't know really, but it seems like they turn up the heat like mad. Must be hell to play in that heat.) And the next thing you notice, upon entering the room with the stage, is how incredibly pretty a simple stage design can look. The one for Spring Awakening consists of blackboards with all kinds of things scribbled onto them; texts, anatomical sketches, some of the characters' names. It's great what use they put these blackboards to during the play. When Melchior writes one of his journal entries, the others write keywords on them like "shame", "marriage", "sinful" (and also "stallion" which is definitely a very important keyword! :D); when Moritz and Wendla die, their names are erased from the blackboard, and when Melchior thinks about killing himself too, some of his name is erased before he is convinced otherwise by the apparitions of Moritz of Wendla. When you come in, the whole stage is bathed in blue-white light, and it really creates maximum effect with minimum effort. You can't help but applaud Diego Pitarch for this stage design. Costume designer Constanze Walldorf''s costumes are also very simple, blending perfectly with the stage design without drawing too much attention to themselves.
I would love to go on about the lighting and how it adds to the atmosphere and everything, but I so know nothing whatsoever about lighting. It really adds to the atmosphere though! And one thing I'm really happy about is the fact is that you can actually hear the singers over the music, because it's especially in small theatres that they turn up the volume of the music far too loud, and not only are you lucky to understand the text, but to hear them at all. That's thankfully not the case in the English Theatre, because the actors all have such great voices and it would be a real pity if you couldn't hear them.
So, that brings me to the actors! Let's quickly run through them, alright?
Firstly, I'm really impressed by how versatile Jane Stanton and Matthew Carter (Adult Female and Adult Male) are. They each have about five different roles to play, and they always fall right into them. Each and every single role they play is carefully nuanced and very convincing.
Devon Elise Johnson as Wendla is very cute in her naivety at the beginning, and it's great to see how her Wendla kind of grows up without understanding what's happening to her. She plays exactly the right mixture of woman and child. She also opens the show with an incredible Mama Who Bore Me, and you can't help but fall in love with her. Her scenes with Craig Marther were great; you really have to applaud them for portraying all of Wendla's and Melchior's conflicting feelings so well, especially in the scene during which Wendla wants to be beaten by Melchior. I liked Craig Marther a good deal better than last show. That is not to say that I didn't like him last time, it just seemed to me that he was not at his best, especially singing-wise. Totally revoking my opinion now!
Greg Fossard as Moritz was just as fantastic as last time. I am so in love with his accent, it makes his Moritz just this shade of even more adorable. The audience last night adored him, he got an awful lot of laughs and applause, and it was really deserved. His timing was perfect, he built his role really well, from the exhausted student who just can't keep up and is haunted by "dark phantasms" of women's legs in blue stockings to the incredibly desperate young man who doesn't see any other way but to take his own life. (That's one of the best scenes ever, by the way. Not only extraordinarily well played by Greg, but it's also another example of the "maximum effect with minimum effort" philosophy; when Moritz shoots himself, there's no bang or anything, Melchior just comes up behind him, and blows some chalk dust from behind his head. It's a really mindblowing scene.) Also: every time he hit one of his high notes in Don't Do Sadness, my heart constricted. You really don't expect him to sing such crystal clear high notes because he has a rather raspy voice, but he's perfectly able to!
Nooow on to the girls. My favourite is certainly Natalie Garner as Ilse/Thea. She just has an awesome voice. She opens her mouth, and you're just blown out of your seat. I love it when she and Tanya Shields (Martha) sing The Dark I Know Well together. Gives me the goosebumps. And then there's Lizzi Franklin as Anna who didn't blow me away as much but whom I like especially as an actress. Her concern for Martha when they learn that her father beats her all the time is so heart-wrenching. It's a pity that she doesn't have many opportunities to shine because I think she's really great and she was one of those who rocked most during the cabaret.
The boys are Antony Irwin as Georg, Matt McGoldrick as Otto, Daniel Ellison as Hänschen and Gareth Mitchell as Ernst. While I really like Antony Irwin, Matt McGoldrick pales a little in comparison with the others (but well, he does have a rather small role). But they all can't compare to my two all-time favourites in this show, Daniel Ellison and Gareth Mitchell. Their scene (the reprise of The Word of Your Body) is my favouritest and just so squee-worthy. When they finally kissed, the whole audience cheered and applauded which was just so... nice. If I hadn't been laughing so hard, I think I would have cried because it was just such a beautiful moment. (The audience was AMAZING anyway, there was so much applause inbetween and during scenes, I've never seen anything like it!) Anyway, Daniel and Gareth! I especially love Gareth; he's a great dancer, his voice is beyond amazing, and oh my God, how I fell in love with him even more when he started as Daniel recited something in Latin lesson. (It was probably some sexy talk in Latin. I wouldn't know though. :/) They're best when they come together though. <3 They're both such fantastic singers.
I don't know whether I've ever been so utterly and completely in love with the cast of any show. It makes me want to all keep them here in Germany and never let them go back to Britain! And they're all still so young and rough and so good already, so I can't even imagine how good they will be in ten years' time when they've grown even more. WILL THEY BE CRAZY BRILLIANT? Probably. WILL I HAVE TO MIGRATE TO WHEREVER THEY ARE? Definitely. I also bought their cast recording of Spring Awakening and I've been listening to it while typing this, and let me tell you, it's just so good. Who needs the OBC recording anyway?
Also, how is it I still have Daniel's "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn..." stuck in my head after listening to the whole Spring Awakening recording? Cue: smooth transition to the cabaret after the show! The cast spent a week rehearsing the songs and performances they put together and we were some of the lucky people who were there to see the result. :) They had an American theme for the evening, and they opened the cabaret with On Broadway. And then it was Gareth/Daniel duet time! They always say, leave the best for last, but that was totally my highlight for the night. They sang I'll Cover You, and then Gareth started flirting with someone in the audience which of course pissed Daniel off, and then they went from that to Take Me or Leave Me (slightly changed to "gay men, what is it about them? Can't live with them or without them..."). Anyway, this was pretty awesome, and can I just say that Gareth is just so adorable and so blatantly himself, which I love, and OMG, I envied him his shoes! :D
Other songs during the first part of the evening I loved were Who Knew, sung by Devon and Natalie if I'm not mistaken, the New York, New York/Empire State of Mind mash-up, It's All About You sung by the boys, and then a mash-up by some youtube celebrity I JUST HAVE NO IDEA WHO IT IS, which was a mash-up of a multitude of songs so I basically have no idea what was in there! (ETA: I know now. It's Sam Tsuis mash-up of Love the Way You Lie, Dynamite and Teenage Dream. Yet another person to musically fall in love with. Oh dear.) Daniel's lines from Love the Way You Lie were just amazing though, and Teenage Dream was in there somewhere too. I think that was my second-favourite part of the evening.
During the second part of the evening, Craig's lovely ukulele was introduced, and sadly, I didn't quite get her name, but uh, she was great. :) (She played an important part in the opening song for the second part after the five minute oh maybe more than five minutes interval, When Loves Takes Over.) I also really enjoyed Natalie's Beautiful Disaster, and then the boys sang a song by "the best boy band ever", and I have no idea what it was, but they were all shaking with supressed laughter, so this was pretty funny. :D Then Lizzi and Craig sang a duet, some song by Kings of Leon or something? (ETA: Use Somebody. I am shamefully uneducated but I promise to get my stuff right next time!) And then and then and then, Daniel and Antony sang Tomorrow, a song that's supposed to be sung by a small girl, so they just never really had the opportunity to sing it "because, as you see, they're not that". The boys then sang a mash-up from something by the Kaiser Chiefs and something else which I loved. And somewhere inbetween all those songs, there was the Glee mash-up of Halo/Walking on Sunshine which was really really good (loved Devon during this one), and when the evening drew to an end and everyone was shouting for more, they ended their show with Don't Stop Believing, and it was so much fun, and Gareth was "bababa"-ing with such enthusiasm! :D
Anyway, this last part of the entry has kind of got out of hand and become rather incoherent, but the gist of all this is: they rocked the stage. I love them. I want to keep them and never give them back. Now, how do I arrange this? *stealthy ninja mode*
The first thing you really notice about the English Theatre is that it's unbearably warm in there. (I don't know really, but it seems like they turn up the heat like mad. Must be hell to play in that heat.) And the next thing you notice, upon entering the room with the stage, is how incredibly pretty a simple stage design can look. The one for Spring Awakening consists of blackboards with all kinds of things scribbled onto them; texts, anatomical sketches, some of the characters' names. It's great what use they put these blackboards to during the play. When Melchior writes one of his journal entries, the others write keywords on them like "shame", "marriage", "sinful" (and also "stallion" which is definitely a very important keyword! :D); when Moritz and Wendla die, their names are erased from the blackboard, and when Melchior thinks about killing himself too, some of his name is erased before he is convinced otherwise by the apparitions of Moritz of Wendla. When you come in, the whole stage is bathed in blue-white light, and it really creates maximum effect with minimum effort. You can't help but applaud Diego Pitarch for this stage design. Costume designer Constanze Walldorf''s costumes are also very simple, blending perfectly with the stage design without drawing too much attention to themselves.
I would love to go on about the lighting and how it adds to the atmosphere and everything, but I so know nothing whatsoever about lighting. It really adds to the atmosphere though! And one thing I'm really happy about is the fact is that you can actually hear the singers over the music, because it's especially in small theatres that they turn up the volume of the music far too loud, and not only are you lucky to understand the text, but to hear them at all. That's thankfully not the case in the English Theatre, because the actors all have such great voices and it would be a real pity if you couldn't hear them.
So, that brings me to the actors! Let's quickly run through them, alright?
Firstly, I'm really impressed by how versatile Jane Stanton and Matthew Carter (Adult Female and Adult Male) are. They each have about five different roles to play, and they always fall right into them. Each and every single role they play is carefully nuanced and very convincing.
Devon Elise Johnson as Wendla is very cute in her naivety at the beginning, and it's great to see how her Wendla kind of grows up without understanding what's happening to her. She plays exactly the right mixture of woman and child. She also opens the show with an incredible Mama Who Bore Me, and you can't help but fall in love with her. Her scenes with Craig Marther were great; you really have to applaud them for portraying all of Wendla's and Melchior's conflicting feelings so well, especially in the scene during which Wendla wants to be beaten by Melchior. I liked Craig Marther a good deal better than last show. That is not to say that I didn't like him last time, it just seemed to me that he was not at his best, especially singing-wise. Totally revoking my opinion now!
Greg Fossard as Moritz was just as fantastic as last time. I am so in love with his accent, it makes his Moritz just this shade of even more adorable. The audience last night adored him, he got an awful lot of laughs and applause, and it was really deserved. His timing was perfect, he built his role really well, from the exhausted student who just can't keep up and is haunted by "dark phantasms" of women's legs in blue stockings to the incredibly desperate young man who doesn't see any other way but to take his own life. (That's one of the best scenes ever, by the way. Not only extraordinarily well played by Greg, but it's also another example of the "maximum effect with minimum effort" philosophy; when Moritz shoots himself, there's no bang or anything, Melchior just comes up behind him, and blows some chalk dust from behind his head. It's a really mindblowing scene.) Also: every time he hit one of his high notes in Don't Do Sadness, my heart constricted. You really don't expect him to sing such crystal clear high notes because he has a rather raspy voice, but he's perfectly able to!
Nooow on to the girls. My favourite is certainly Natalie Garner as Ilse/Thea. She just has an awesome voice. She opens her mouth, and you're just blown out of your seat. I love it when she and Tanya Shields (Martha) sing The Dark I Know Well together. Gives me the goosebumps. And then there's Lizzi Franklin as Anna who didn't blow me away as much but whom I like especially as an actress. Her concern for Martha when they learn that her father beats her all the time is so heart-wrenching. It's a pity that she doesn't have many opportunities to shine because I think she's really great and she was one of those who rocked most during the cabaret.
The boys are Antony Irwin as Georg, Matt McGoldrick as Otto, Daniel Ellison as Hänschen and Gareth Mitchell as Ernst. While I really like Antony Irwin, Matt McGoldrick pales a little in comparison with the others (but well, he does have a rather small role). But they all can't compare to my two all-time favourites in this show, Daniel Ellison and Gareth Mitchell. Their scene (the reprise of The Word of Your Body) is my favouritest and just so squee-worthy. When they finally kissed, the whole audience cheered and applauded which was just so... nice. If I hadn't been laughing so hard, I think I would have cried because it was just such a beautiful moment. (The audience was AMAZING anyway, there was so much applause inbetween and during scenes, I've never seen anything like it!) Anyway, Daniel and Gareth! I especially love Gareth; he's a great dancer, his voice is beyond amazing, and oh my God, how I fell in love with him even more when he started as Daniel recited something in Latin lesson. (It was probably some sexy talk in Latin. I wouldn't know though. :/) They're best when they come together though. <3 They're both such fantastic singers.
I don't know whether I've ever been so utterly and completely in love with the cast of any show. It makes me want to all keep them here in Germany and never let them go back to Britain! And they're all still so young and rough and so good already, so I can't even imagine how good they will be in ten years' time when they've grown even more. WILL THEY BE CRAZY BRILLIANT? Probably. WILL I HAVE TO MIGRATE TO WHEREVER THEY ARE? Definitely. I also bought their cast recording of Spring Awakening and I've been listening to it while typing this, and let me tell you, it's just so good. Who needs the OBC recording anyway?
Also, how is it I still have Daniel's "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn..." stuck in my head after listening to the whole Spring Awakening recording? Cue: smooth transition to the cabaret after the show! The cast spent a week rehearsing the songs and performances they put together and we were some of the lucky people who were there to see the result. :) They had an American theme for the evening, and they opened the cabaret with On Broadway. And then it was Gareth/Daniel duet time! They always say, leave the best for last, but that was totally my highlight for the night. They sang I'll Cover You, and then Gareth started flirting with someone in the audience which of course pissed Daniel off, and then they went from that to Take Me or Leave Me (slightly changed to "gay men, what is it about them? Can't live with them or without them..."). Anyway, this was pretty awesome, and can I just say that Gareth is just so adorable and so blatantly himself, which I love, and OMG, I envied him his shoes! :D
Other songs during the first part of the evening I loved were Who Knew, sung by Devon and Natalie if I'm not mistaken, the New York, New York/Empire State of Mind mash-up, It's All About You sung by the boys, and then a mash-up by some youtube celebrity I JUST HAVE NO IDEA WHO IT IS, which was a mash-up of a multitude of songs so I basically have no idea what was in there! (ETA: I know now. It's Sam Tsuis mash-up of Love the Way You Lie, Dynamite and Teenage Dream. Yet another person to musically fall in love with. Oh dear.) Daniel's lines from Love the Way You Lie were just amazing though, and Teenage Dream was in there somewhere too. I think that was my second-favourite part of the evening.
During the second part of the evening, Craig's lovely ukulele was introduced, and sadly, I didn't quite get her name, but uh, she was great. :) (She played an important part in the opening song for the second part after the five minute oh maybe more than five minutes interval, When Loves Takes Over.) I also really enjoyed Natalie's Beautiful Disaster, and then the boys sang a song by "the best boy band ever", and I have no idea what it was, but they were all shaking with supressed laughter, so this was pretty funny. :D Then Lizzi and Craig sang a duet, some song by Kings of Leon or something? (ETA: Use Somebody. I am shamefully uneducated but I promise to get my stuff right next time!) And then and then and then, Daniel and Antony sang Tomorrow, a song that's supposed to be sung by a small girl, so they just never really had the opportunity to sing it "because, as you see, they're not that". The boys then sang a mash-up from something by the Kaiser Chiefs and something else which I loved. And somewhere inbetween all those songs, there was the Glee mash-up of Halo/Walking on Sunshine which was really really good (loved Devon during this one), and when the evening drew to an end and everyone was shouting for more, they ended their show with Don't Stop Believing, and it was so much fun, and Gareth was "bababa"-ing with such enthusiasm! :D
Anyway, this last part of the entry has kind of got out of hand and become rather incoherent, but the gist of all this is: they rocked the stage. I love them. I want to keep them and never give them back. Now, how do I arrange this? *stealthy ninja mode*
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:45 pm (UTC)Love!
xxxx
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:52 pm (UTC)Love. ♥ AND HUGS.