So pungent are the anthems of rebellion that you can practically smell the hormones perfuming the air in the Keegan Theatre’s production on the Church Street stage. The large cast of sixteen features 14 fresh-faced youth and only two adult actors (who play all of the authoritarian roles, naturally).
Directors Mark A. Rhea and Susan Marie Rhea present a pared-down, amped-up evening of theater that has a “Dead Poets Society” feel to it — their hypercaffeinated ensemble ably assaults Sater’s precocious lyrics (consider the uber-poetic, rallying cry to bask in “The Song of Purple Summer”) with lots of hopping and bopping and writhing in place. Among a uniformly solid cast wholly affected by the elongated vowels familiar in modern vernacular, Paul Scanlan’s twitchy portrayal of the tortured Moritz Stiefel stands out next to Nora Palka’s gentle, mature Ilse.
With taut music direction and smart sound design by Jake Null and his ever-present orchestra, a merely juvenile adaptation of “Spring Awakening” blossoms from a senseless immersion into a sexually oppressive German town to a full-blown musical fantasia underscoring the same problems that remain in the here and now.
