Season of love.

Spring Awakening

Book and lyrics by Steven Sater * Music by Duncan Sheik * Choreographed by Bill T. Jones * Directed by Michael Mayer * Eugene O'Neill theater, New York City (open-minded run)

Frank Wedekind's 1891 play Fruhlings Erwachen (Spring's Awakening), with its mix of adolescent sexuality, masturbation, abortion, incest, homosexuality, and suicide, has been cheered and condemned since the day it was first staged. Now pop songsmith Duncan Sheik, writer-lyricist Steven Sater, and director Michael Mayer have adapted the play into a brilliantly staged musical, with the subtly altered title Spring Awakening, that taps into the crazy, passionate energy of kids. The show, which had a sold-out 2006 run of nearly three months at Chelsea's Atlantic Theater Company and reopens December 10 on the Great White Way, pulls no punches in its depiction of teenage eroticism. Think of it as the Shortbus of Broadway.

Even though the story takes place in provincial Germany at the end of the 19th century, the theme of brainy, horny adolescents searching for answers in a sea of ignorance is both timeless and, in an era of abstinence-only sex education, contemporary. The show opens sparely and beautifully with a ballad, "Mama Who Bore Me," sung by Wendla, the female lead (Lea Michele, a gorgeous and talented singer-actor destined to be a big star). A boisterous blast of hormones on parade called "The Bitch of Living" introduces all the schoolboy characters, who stomp on every inch of the hardwood stage, including their chairs. Bill T. Jones's choreography has the boys and girls compulsively running their hands all over their own bodies, making discoveries that simultaneously thrill and horrify them. In the script's wittiest adaptation, all the parents and teachers are played by two actors, Christine Estabrook (of Desperate Housewives) and Stephen Spinella (Angels in America).

Act 2 has its own rowdy roof-raiser, "Totally Fucked," led by handsome Jonathan Groff as Melchior, the plays tragic hero. But there are other memorably original tunes: "Don't Do Sadness," sung by Melchior's tormented best friend, Moritz (John Gallagher, who superbly channels Duncan Sheik by way of Elvis Costello); "The Dark I Know Well," a lovely duet by two girls telling without telling about being molested by their fathers; and "My Junk," in which Jonathan B. Wright as the aggressively gay Hanschen sits center stage beating off under his nightshirt.

But the most haunting number in the show is the twice-reprised "The Word of Your Body," which contains the plays deepest wisdom about adolescent sexual initiation: "Oh, you're gonna be wounded / Oh, I'm gonna be your wound / Oh, you're gonna be bruised too / Oh, you're gonna be my bruise."

Michael Mayer's Brechtian staging is economical and highly theatrical. The songs alternate unpredictably between loud and soft, fast and slow; many end without demanding applause. Anyone who knows Duncan Sheik's music ("Barely Breathing") might expect a wistful folk-inspired score, and some of it is, but most of these songs are solid rock and roll. Spring Awakening is as hip as Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and it rocks like Rent, which it inevitably recalls, partly because the cast of excellent, quirky up-and-coming performers seem to be having the time of their lives doing the show.