Spring Awakening ( (Broadway: Deaf West)

"Director Michael Arden has staged it with such precision and alchemy, bringing tremendous energy to each number. I challenge you to see this and, regardless of your familiarity with the music, resist the urge to bop along in your seat...Do yourself a favor and see this before it closes in January." Full Review

"By cleverly pairing deaf actors who are signing with hearing actors who are singing, Deaf West has made the show the most accessible on Broadway, but also forged it into something theatrically exceptional...That such a show should be so joyful and so beautiful — from the evocative lighting to the hand ballet of sign language by the entire cast — is itself a sign: Deaf West has done it right." Full Review

"Deaf West, Michael Arden, and their extraordinary team reinvented this ravishing musical and created something truly mesmerizing...This production is not only important, it deserves to be seen by an even wider audience...Deaf West Theatre’s 'Spring Awakening' is one that will go down in the history books. It’s quite extraordinary when you can improve upon perfection. Dare I say, it's better than the original." Full Review

"This new production is a wildly impactful and visceral production that goes straight to the heart and doesn’t let go...'Spring Awakening' is as potent as ever...'Spring Awakening,' as evident by the handful of teens waiting in tears by the stage door after the performance I saw, is palpable. Full Review

"The show has a talented cast; the lyrics are poignant, and now more than ever it is a powerful show to see...This show is a must see! I wanted to jump up on stage during 'Purple Summer' and chant along with the cast. A perfect night at the theater." Full Review

"It’s early in the theater season for miracles, but we’ve got one already. A company featuring deaf actors is bringing the sound of music to Broadway in a revival even more thrilling than its original production...The combined energy of all these young actors, deaf and hearing (including one actress in a wheel chair), is exhilarating." Full Review

"Director Michael Arden's take on 'Spring Awakening' is not only deeply moving and incredibly brilliant, but it reveals elements and nuances of these characters that we haven't seen before. You'd be hard pressed to argue that the piece shouldn't be performed in this way from now on...Given that this is a special engagement, I cannot recommend seeing this enough. It is undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable theatrical experiences I've seen." Full Review

"A thrilling new look at a musical that still bears hidden treasures nine years after its debut...Everything benefits from director Michael Arden's muscular approach. Arden brings instruments into the mise-en-scène in a manner reminiscent of John Doyle. Arden's Brechtian embrace of theatricality proves to be vital to the epic theater of adolescence...This revival is that rare reimagining that furthers the themes of the original work, rather than plastering over them with an auteur's vision." Full Review

"This revival would have been unjustifiable were it not for the brilliant idea of placing the story in the context of deafness and using many deaf actors to tell it...Deafness is not a random overlay on 'Spring Awakening' or a trendy gimmick hatched to sell it...I liked the new production better than the original." Full Review

"One of the great musicals of the last decade was born anew on Sunday, when the thrillingly inventive Deaf West Theater production of 'Spring Awakening' opened on Broadway. Any qualms theater-lovers might have about this being a premature, whiplash-inducing revival will vanish like frost in strong sunlight when the young cast of both hearing and deaf actors floods the stage...A first-rate production of a transporting musical." Full Review

"This intoxicating production kicks the power of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s propulsive musical into a higher sphere altogether. And yet it seems truer in spirit than even the original 2006 production to Frank Wedekind’s daring, scandal-making play about teens on the verge of a sexual breakdown...The only shadow cast here is of great musical-theater making. The lighting may be dappled but 'Spring Awakening' is brilliant." Full Review

"This new 'Awakening' finds added resonance in the musical's warnings against the tyranny of ignorance and small-mindedness. Director Michael Arden has recruited a superb cast that includes actors from the deaf community, and incorporated American Sign Language into the show...It's a darkly sumptuous, ultimately uplifting feast for the ears and eyes." Full Review

"The score serves the story, and is deserving of further study...The rock sound in the score, and the nineteenth century attitudes in the story make an effective and powerful cocktail. The audience, refreshingly young for Broadway, did a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’, and you know what? So did I." Full Review

"This moving revival seals a pact with an audience in a gentler manner than the more scaldingly assertive original production...Signing has been integrated here so deftly that you feel the language’s fluidity has a natural place in musical theater...The show’s depiction of teenagers with a need to unyoke themselves from adult control remains vibrantly intact...The rock-infused energy lifts up the entire enterprise. Cue the sign again, for heaven." Full Review

"The result is an exhilarating and fluid hybrid of song, word, dance and sign — and a sheer triumph for director Michael Arden and choreographer Spencer Liff. The songs sit seamlessly in the show, often as brightly lit fantasy sequences that snap back into the grim narrative...If anything, the brilliant staging reveals chips and holes in the book and lyrics, which simply don't measure up to the ingeniousness of the new show itself." Full Review

"'Spring Awakening' 2015 is quite moving and feels even more organic than the in-your-face, bold original. It flows beautifully, and although not nearly as energetic and explosive, it has it’s own rhythm and spirit." Full Review

"It’s been twelve years since Deaf West mounted a Broadway production—let’s hope we don’t have to wait that long for another. Same goes for the immensely talented first time director Arden, who saw the amazing potential of Duncan Sheik’s gorgeous music and knew just what to do to wake up Broadway with it once again. Hopefully there is far more to come from this pairing." Full Review

"Sheik’s music emphasizes beat over melody, offering insufficient variety...Sater’s lyrics have punch but can be unsubtle...Arden and Liff keep the actors moving in interesting formations...Wedekind’s play is fully realized in the dynamic staging, but there’s also a cool grayness that creates a sense of distance...This doesn’t detract from the superlative performances." Full Review

"This unique packaging of a more than hundred-year-old play as a rock popera has returned to Broadway, proving once again that if the music is appealing enough and the story's themes enduring, directorial brilliance and originality can strike more than once...This cast of mostly unknowns couldn't be better...Deaf West's translation adds a subtle artistic layer that actually deepens and enriches the story telling." Full Review

"In Deaf West's exhilarating reboot of the moody and stirring 2007 Tony winner, the repressed and rudderless kids are lifting more than their voices. They’re also raising their hands to express themselves — and casting a whole new spell. The show combines hearing and non-hearing actors who use American Sign Language. Some roles are played by two actors — one who sings, one who signs. Many in the cast do both at once. The result: Lines and lyrics look as poetic and provocative as they sound." Full Review

"An inspired and innovative revival that incorporates American Sign Language...Although it's hard to shake off memories of the brilliant original production, Arden's revival is visually stunning, emotionally poignant and thoroughly exciting in its own right." Full Review

"Few things in theater are rarer than a production so fine that it cries out to be seen in spite of the show, but that’s the case with Deaf West’s 'Spring Awakening:' It ranks among the most emotionally charged renderings of a musical to come to Broadway in the past decade, one that all who love the genre should rush to see." Full Review

"The juxtaposition of the story's 1891 setting and the intense, heart-pumping, contemporary score by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater remains fresh, but the added element of a combined deaf and hearing cast gives 'Spring' an extra jolt...'Spring Awakening' is a refreshing challenge to the rigid Broadway template." Full Review

"The students and grownups speak a different language, and the use of American Sign Language provides a metaphorical layer to the generational divide. Conceptually, it is an inspired touch, but Michael Arden’s meticulous direction adds the poetry and emotion that gives this version its resonance...It is all intricately woven, featuring deaf and hearing actors who both sign and sing...The staging, graced with beautifully evocative choreography and design elements, make for a moving experience." Full Review

"Aided by a tight band of strings and drums, by inspired and precise lighting, and by smartly repressed costuming and somber scenic design with a gorgeous surprise at the end, the brilliant direction and choreography turn 'Spring Awakening,' already a fine if unusual musical, into something really special and new." Full Review