Published: June 04, 2009 05:31 am      

THEATER REVIEW: "Spring Awakening" now on stage at Kentucky Center

“Spring Awakening,” the long-running alt-rock musical that swept the 2007 Tony Awards, has arrived at the Kentucky Center with much fanfare as part of the PNC Broadway Across America series.

Based on Frank Wedekind’s controversial/banned 1891 German novel about the sexual stirrings of teenage boys and girls in a horrifically repressive society, the excitingly produced work by Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music) is an undoubted artistic triumph.

Yet it must be said that the heavy-handed depiction of parental ignorance and cruelty combined with strict adherence to authoritarian teachings of schools and churches crowds out any hope of catharsis. It’s an unrelenting tract.

Perhaps theatergoers closer to the ages of the hard-working young cast headed by Kyle Riabko as Melchior, Christy Altomare as Wendla, and Blake Bashoff as Moritz can best appreciate the show and its in-your-face sex themes that cover fornication (rape?), masturbation, homosexuality, incest and abortion as well as songs about “My Junk,” “The Bitch of Living” and “Totally (Expletive--rhymes with destruct).” Bill T. Jones provides foot-stomping choreography for the last two, wildly applauded by the audience.

Melchior is the handsome rebel who battles the system as an atheist and a believer in truth. He and Wendla, a cautious soulmate, find time to talk, fall in love, and have sex that gets her pregnant. She dies after her mother arranges an abortion.

Moritz with his wild hair style (how did the school ever allow that?) is the class clown with a million unanswered questions and torments about his budding sexuality. When he fails in school, he kills himself.

All adult roles are competently played by Angela Reed as the women and Henry Stram as the men.

The adolescent yearnings find expression in such often lovely words and melodies as “The Word of Your Body,” sung by Melchior and Wendla, later reprised by two boys who make love; Moritz’s “Don’t Do Sadness”; the gorgeous “Blue Wind” sung by Ilse (Krystina Alabado), whose father molests her, and ‘The Song of Purple Summer,” the company finale.

When these teenagers in their dull school uniforms and prim clothes suddenly grab hand mikes and belt out contemporary words to modern beats it’s startlingly effective.

Germans love kitsch, which may account for Wendla and Moritz rising up from their graves to console heartbroken Melchior at play’s end. Oh, please!

At the Kentucky Center, as in New York, a small band and some audience members sit around the playing area. Cast members sit with them as they come and go.