THEATER | “Spring Awakening”: Teenagers are horny. And?

Exactly why Anton Gabler shipped out from Austria in 1875 is a matter of some dispute. His daughter Margaret told her nephew Joseph that Anton left to escape the Franco-Prussian War—but that war ended in 1871, so either Margaret’s memory was faulty or her father had packed his bags on the basis of some very old newspapers. Perhaps the real story is that Anton and his Bavarian wife Mary fled the Motherland to escape a repressive society so that their great-great-grandson could one day live in the land of milk and honey, where he might enjoy seeing their struggles reenacted onstage before spilling out with his fellow theatergoers onto the streets of 21st century Minneapolis, a sexually liberated socialist utopia. If so, their plan worked out pretty well (except for the socialism).

Spring Awakening, the Broadway sensation now paying a visit to the Orpheum Theatre, is an eye-opening, truly shocking theatrical experience. Unless, that is, you already know that teenagers like to have sex. In that case, it’s just a fairly run-of-the-mill rock musical. Based on an 1891 German play that was dark and subversive for its time, the musical aims to rattle the rafters by dramatizing the struggles of adolescents who long to unlace their boots, their Bibles, and their bodices. (In the case of one bodice, they twice succeed—resulting in some breast-baring that, along with the corresponding pelvic thrusts and later occurrences of a certain slang word for that pantomimed act, prompted the Hennepin Theatre Trust’s press contact to warn me that she was not sure Spring Awakening was “quite up Jean’s alley.”)

The action takes place on a stage-within-a-stage surrounded by a small group combining (seemingly) actual audience members with (apparently) planted cast members in contemporary garb who occasionally join the costumed cast in song, underlining the universality of the (re)generation gap. Angela Reed and Henry Stram play the roles of all adult women and men, so reveling in the thick-accented proto-fascism that you expect their arms to jerk into the air a la Dr. Strangelove.

The younger cast members are amply charismatic, in appropriately descending order of charisma from the leads to the supporting players. (A standout among the latter is Andy Mientus, seducing a male classmate with a sly suggestion that he appreciates the virtues of traditional single-sex education.) Unfortunately, the musical never really gives them the opportunity to do much more than look tortured and beatific. The music, by Duncan Sheik, isn’t particularly memorable, and with the exception of the second-act number built around the aforementioned f-bomb, the song-and-dance interludes don’t build much energy. The characters go through the requisite paces of adolescent angst, each scene its own little after-school special, and an unexpected flirtation with S&M (all the more unexpected since the characters are inspired by an incest victim) provides the only crackle of genuine suspense, the only indication that being a teenager might be a little more complicated than just Being Complicated.

If you really need another masturbation scene to laugh at, by all means, go see Spring Awakening…but you can rent American Pie quite a few times for $78.