Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...If you've never seen "Spring Awakening," or want to relive a score that broke a lot of tired rules back in its day, here is your chance. This is the best local production of this work to date: Porchlight has developed an enveloping experience and a reminder that great, young ensembles always have been the Chicago theater's greatest strength."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Sheik's score is rich in snarling, growling rock-and-roll angst, amplified by microphones the characters wield like weapons, and choreography that's more Rolling Stones-in-an-arena than 1890s small-town Germany. Porchlight gets the growls and snarls, the pitch less so; ramping up the volume does not mask sour notes."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...The production’s powerful impact owes much to the beautifully layered choral vocals and transparent instrumental textures achieved under the music direction of keyboardist Justin Akira Kono (who leads a classical string quartet augmented by a rock rhythm section) and the sound design of Matthew R. Chase (engineered by Jamie Davis)."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...As timely now as it was when the original play was written over 150 years ago, Spring Awakening is now rocking the stage at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. This edgy musical might seem a bit aggressive for the normal fare at this venue (known during the day as a Windy City school for the performing arts), but trust me, these baby-faced performers fit right in. Based on the scandalous banned-at-the-time 1891 German play by Frank Wedekind, this coming-of-age rock musical about the inner and outer tumult of adolescent sexuality has found quite a fan base. Now directed and choreographed by Brenda Didier, this Awakening isn't played for its shock value, for which I am entirely grateful. With the daily bombardment of car-jackings, stabbings, robberies and assaults on the news, reported four times a day, everyday, including a days earlier transit station assault on local actor and personality Will Clinger, I am happy a little restraint was shown."
Let's Play Theatrical Reviews - Recommended
"...From a book and lyrics from Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik, Spring Awakening is a combination of a rock musical that meets up with adolescent sexuality. Based on the 1891 German play by Frank Wedekind with the same name, we meet teens from 19th-century Germany, trying to understand life and their new sensual desires they never experienced during puberty. "
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"..."Spring Awakening" tells and shows us the self-discoveries that teens find. They learn about love ! They learn about depression! They learn about suicide! They learn about shame! They learn about death! They learn about abortion! Not what one would call a typical musical, but one that digs deep into the mentality of the teens and the adults that choose not to tell them the truth about what their future might hold. Porchlight Music Theatre, over its years, has brought us other musicals that were not "the norm", and by being daring, they have achieved some great things. many Jeff Awards for sure, and I must say, this is one that I am sure will hit great numbers of nominations."
WTTW - Highly Recommended
"..."Spring Awakening" is a triumphant production on every level. It tops off a Porchlight season that has featured sterling revivals of "Pump Boys & Dinettes" and "Blues in the Night," and it should herald the arrival of its 2022-23 season that will feature "Rent," "Cabaret," and the Chicago premiere of a quirky love story titled "Ernest Shackleton Loves Me.""
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...What emerges in Porchlight’s production is a brilliant piece of theatre that speaks loudly and profoundly to modern, openminded audiences. The story may be from another era but, enhanced by Duncan Sheik’s melancholy, folk-infused rock score, accompanied by a talented orchestra and sung by a brilliant, eager young cast, Frank Wedekind’s ideas emerge as fresh and contemporary."
Buzznews.net - Highly Recommended
"...Porchlight Music Theatre concludes their season with 'Spring Awakening' directed and choreographed by Brenda Didier. 'Spring Awakening' has become one of the most produced shows in the US, but Porchlight's production feels like a discovery. While the staging and costumes are faithful to the original production, this version is full of bright young energy."
The Fourth Walsh - Recommended
"...Porchlight Music Theatre presents SPRING AWAKENING.
Over a century ago, German Playwright Frank Wedekind debuted his provocative play, “Spring Awakening.” Wedekind penned a coming-of-age tale of teenagers in a 19th century sexual oppressed society. He wrote about puberty, rape, sexual assault, erotic fantasy and homosexuality. His characters dealt with child abuse, neglect, suicide ideation, and mid-terms. His play was controversial, often banned and timeless."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...Just over 130 years ago, when the German Empire was young and the 19th century was old, the German expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind wrote eine Kindertragodie (the play's subtitle) called Frühlings Erwachen-"Spring Awakening." Wedekind's play was a frontal assault on the stultifying bourgeoise culture of provincial Germany and featured topics like wet dreams, masturbation, illegal abortions, homoerotic attraction, teenage sexual ignorance and a Mitteleuropäische fascination with birch switches hitting bare bottoms."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Spring Awakening ends with the damaged Ilse leading the cast in the hopeful and beautiful “The Song of Purple Summer,” an homage to life as it might be if we stop letting our beliefs and politics get in the way. Porchlight’s production, in which the tragic lead characters smile and are recognized by the others as they blend into the group singing the song, allows us to pull away from the horror and feel good about the possibilities."
TotalTheater - Highly Recommended
"...If the purpose of the music in "musicals" is, by definition, to express the characters' inner perceptions, every song in Duncan Sheik's pop-oriented score for Spring Awakening, even the duets, emerges as a soliloquy revealing what fills the consciousness of each individual vocalist. Acknowledging the intimacy presented by so small an auditorium as the Ruth Page, director Brenda Didier has wisely dispensed with most of the hand-microphones brandished in Broadway premiere, instead allowing Chris Rhoton's wood-plank floor to resound with the angry foot-stamping of frustrated adolescents, even as Patrick Chan's misty reed lighting lends the quiet moments a romantic enchantment before breaking suddenly into dazzling brilliance."
BroadwayWorld - Recommended
"...Porchlight's SPRING AWAKENING brings out moments of the raw emotion and many of the angsty vibes in the musical with Hlava's Wendla and Kelch's Mortiz as powerful anchors in this ensemble of moody teens (though, aside from Hlava, all the actors are past their teen days). While the production doesn't solve the musical's challenges of underbaked characters and heavy-handedness when it comes to the issues presented, Didier's direction and choreography bring us some nice tableaus, along with Justin Akira Kono's music direction that highlights the ensemble in key vocal moments."
NewCity Chicago - Recommended
"...To the great credit of director-choreographer Brenda Didier, the actors and the production's terrific pit band, this show, which is so joyless on the page, nevertheless offers joys on the stage. And, for those, like many teens (I could once count myself in that number), who find catharsis and perhaps gothic glamor in the suffering of fictive teens, this is a show to run to... But perhaps without one's parents."
