Review: Excellent SLOC show is sure to awaken something in everyone

Every once in a while a community theater company puts together a production that could stand toe to toe with a professional production of the same play. Sometimes it even surpasses the production values and the talent pool that the professional company has put together.

For me, when that happens it’s pure heaven. After all, when a professional touring company rolls into the area you have a certain expectation of excellence. Rightly or wrongly, that expectation level is not always the same for an amateur production.

SLOC Musical Theater’s latest production of the 2023-24 season is “Spring Awakening.” It is outstanding from start to finish. The rock musical with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik made its acclaimed Broadway debut in 2006. The show is a disturbing coming-of-age drama set in Germany in the late 1900s. It explores the sexual awakening of a group of five teenage girls and six boys, and all that that awakening encompasses.

Director Brian Clemente returns to the SLOC stage with a very clear vision for the production. From casting to set to staging, he is obviously a man on a mission — and the mission is accomplished.
Clemente recently directed this show in another area venue, and he made it clear this time around he was looking for something entirely different.

Clemente’s set design is stark, austere and cold. Lighting designer Josh Karp follows suit with his icy blues and glaring spotlights and great swaths of shadows. Karp may even have taken the darkness to an extreme, as there are times when singers are lost in the shadows to the detriment of the audience, but that is a minor quibble. Costume designer Cheryl Zatt and hair and makeup designer Elizabeth Sherwood-Mack have put together some of the best the SLOC stage has seen.

Choreographer Brittany Glenn has turned her performers into stunning, synchronized dancers. Their staccato movements are performed in perfect unison. Finally, music director Dan Galliher leads the cast through some spectacular performances. For years SLOC has been known to shine with outstanding voices. In this case the cast, whether singing ensemble numbers or breathtaking solos and duets, performs magnificently.

The show has six adult roles, traditionally all played by one male and one female performer. Again, Clemente’s decision to split each of the parts and cast individuals in each role adds wonderful depth and strength to the production. The adults are all staged to dominate the teens, whether on different levels of the actual stage or just by the physical size and demeanor of the actors in the parts. We watch as they reverse their places by the show’s conclusion, being overpowered from a metaphorical standpoint and staging to be dominated by the youth.  

The cast is filled with a collection of some of the best the area has to offer. Wendla, played by Hannah M. DeStefano, opens the show with an exquisite “Mama Who Bore Me,” settibg the tone for the evening. Benji Hitrick is Melchior, Wendla’s love interest. Hitrick hits all the perfect notes of teen lust, angst and desire with a voice that is at the same time plaintive and heartfelt. The cast is riddled with talent. Josh DeMarco is heart-wrenching; Ellya Winchester’s second-act solo is stunning; Steve Kay and Michaela Torres, too, perform beautifully.

The adults are perfectly cast, a mix of faces and names familiar to the area. James W. Alexander, Davis Quinones Jr. and Nichole Burkus all return to the SLOC stage, while many make their SLOC stage debut.

“Spring Awakening” is filled with beautiful music wrapped around a very disquieting book. It is mature in content, and again Clemente handles the very adult themes of awakenings, sexuality — everything from lust, love to masturbation, violence and sexual abuse — with a certain tenderness, getting to the line in the sand but never allowing his actors to cross it.

Perhaps one of the finest all-around productions SLOC has ever presented, “Spring Awakening” should be a must-see on every playgoer’s list this season.

“Spring Awakening” runs through Sunday at 427 Franklin St. in Schenectady. For information or tickets, visit www.sloctheater.org or call 518-730-7370.