Straight Talk!


MNM Theatre Company's CLOSER THAN EVER 1/29/2021

When the curtains opened (or in this virtual world, the video faded in), we are closer than ever to the heavens where four angelic performers sang before us as we entered the many doors filled with musical notations. Alongside whenever the characters were duplicated to hold hands while separately singing the duet, that was excellent use of green screen in post-production. The video production was on another level, where the experience is as though we are amongst the characters and their fight. The choreography, especially “There’s Nothing Like It,” left us with tensors. The moments that were a reminder of theatre are the presence of crew, as they shifted the set around. Next time, I would go back. -DQP

HE SAID, SHE SAID

Reviews and reflections

Spring Awakening - Capital City Theatre

By David Quang Pham and Amanda Donnelly November 20, 2020

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He Said!

We understand the sacrifices that were made to be video quality. When the viewpoint shifted to us being the mirror to Wendla in “Mama Who Bore Me,” the feelings were perplexing. Every component of“I Believe” is haunting. The intimacy director did a sensational job on calibrating the levels of touch thatgo beyond the viewers’ comfort, without the performers sacrificing their own comfort. The interaction between every lover is natural. In the context of sound engineering, it was difficult to understand what the ensemble is saying, particularly “Touch Me” and “The Guilty Ones.” Instrumentally, the orchestra was immemorable. It is necessarily synthesized for the time being. If a revamped recording was ever donewithout any audience, the instruments should occupy most of one audio channel while the lyrical dialogues should occupy the other in each musical number. In the credits, there should be plenty of time to credit every personal with series of transitional graphics. The overall direction is remarkable.

The Capitol City Theater's Production is my introduction into SPRING AWAKENING. The responsible shift to a streaming platform curved the momentary loss of a broad live audience to a broadened accessibility in viewership. The theatre springs into innovation an eye-opening performance.

She Said!

I do believe a portion of the credit for how well done this production was goes to the lighting designer. The amount of times that the lighting on stage gave me chills was too many to count. I especially love the choice to have some actors on the above platform, it truly painted a beautiful stage picture. The choreography, in my opinion, was sub-par as I found myself cringing at the cheesiness of the moves, especially those in “The Bitch of Living”, “My Junk” and “Totally Fucked”. The moves seemed forceful and immature rather than necessary to tell a story. The group vocals blended very nicely, for the most part, with the occasional flat note here or there. Your version of “I Believe” was beautiful and those harmonies sounded superb. Shoutout to Joe Hanon who played Georg; your riffing and energy during “Touch Me”was out of this world great. Riffing can easily be overdone, boring and bad but every note you hit had reason and resonates so well. I loved watching you! (Pretend that doesn’t sound creepy). Additionally, I must say the stage fighting and intimacy was very impressive and every actor had clearlyput in their work. I wish there was more noise during the scene between Melchoir and Wendla where he whips her. It felt like something was missing there.Otherwise, all the fighting looked and sounded realistic and truly had me gasping in shock.

This was quite the skilled performance of Spring Awakening , and I look forward to seeing more shows done by The Capitol City Theater.