"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."
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"I wasn't really moved by the production itself...I was intrigued by the new production’s concept of highlighting the miscommunication between the generations by making many of the youngsters deaf and literally unable to speak to their parents or hear them...When I actually saw the show, I found its conceit of having deaf actors sign their dialogue and song lyrics while hearing actors simultaneously speak and sing the same lines to be distracting and to lessen the emotion."
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"Theatergoers coming to this raw story for the first time will find a musical with even more layers than the production that first seduced Broadway. The addition of sign language encourages a closer look at 'Spring Awakening.'"
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"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."
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"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."
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"Less than a revelation, this new "Spring Awakening" mostly serves as a reaffirmation of the durability and emotional punch of Sheik and Sater's original conception...See this 'Spring Awakening' anyway, because even a flawed performance of this great musical is still better than most of what's on Broadway right now; and because in a few instances — including the final exit of the teenage characters — Arden really has improved upon the original."
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"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."
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"The production has been billed as a radical reimagining of the show. But those who saw the original Broadway production will find this one – with its minimal setting and maximal passion – reliably familiar, though with some themes and concerns clearly sharpened. It isn’t perhaps as well-sung as the original one and in some cases not as well-acted, though in others, like Krysta Rodriguez’s Ilse, it is perhaps acted better."
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