Let's count up how many times I've seen SPRING AWAKENING.
I saw it five times last summer Off-Broadway. First as a critic, then I went back four more times on my own. Thanks to the onstage seating at the Atlantic Theater Company, each time I went back was for merely $10 a ticket.
I have now seen it four times on Broadway. Three of those times were on press tickets, and tonight I saw it on my own dime for the first time on Broadway. Using a discount offer, I got a half-price orchestra seat about 24 hours before the show.
Tonight, the show was more than sold out, with a dozen-person cancellation line snaking the box office. This was probably due not only to its Tony buzz, but also the fact that very few Broadway musicals performed tonight, it being both a Monday night and Memorial Day.
It had been 11 days since I had last seen the show. Since then, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff's fight scene in Act One has been cleaned up considerably. Good thing, since it was looking pretty sloppy last time.
Otherwise, from my view tonight in the extreme left of the fifth row of the orchestra, I got a better view of the technical effects, particularly the lighting scheme. I also noticed for the first time how the center platform moves back and forth centerstage to downstage by computer. Nice effect.
I'm also beginning to question what makes me want to keep returning to SPRING AWAKENING again and again, and why I feel so strongly about why it should win the Tony. It's more than its solid score, or its fantastic young cast. The show is one of the first Broadway musicals in quite some time that provides more than entertainment or some kind of serious agenda. Like all great drama, SPRING AWAKENING speaks to the human condition, what it means for us to exist in the world.
And speaking of the fact that I paid to see it, I resolve that every critic should occasionally pay to see a show. The last time I did so was to re-attend the final performance of FOLLIES at Encores, after having seen the first performance with press tix. It forces us to remember how not everyone in the audience is so fortunate to be able to see everything without cost or financial strain.