The hottest Off-Broadway transplant of the season takes as its source an 1891 Franz Wedekind drama that dealt with teens discovering their sexuality without a shred of knowledge from their teachers or preparation from their Teutonic parents. Layered onto this quaint, excavated tragedy in Spring Awakening is a rocking song list that gives no quarter to the repressions of the bygone century, rawer and more defiantly punkish than any score that has hit Broadway before.
"The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked" are two of the song titles by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik if you're trying to gauge Spring Awakening's shock voltage. Yet there is also beautifully poisonous poetry amid the hormonal riot as Wendla and Melchior fall for each other. "O, I'm gonna be wounded," they sing. "O, I'm gonna be your wound."
As good as Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff are as the lead lovebirds, even they're upstaged by manic antics of John Gallagher, Jr., as Moritz, the school's eraser-headed misfit. Bill T. Jones's outré choreography tops off this riveting spectacle.
