Outstanding performances, nuanced direction, and thrillingly original choreography (all by USC students) make Musical Theatre Repertory’s intimate staging of the 2007 Broadway musical hit Spring Awakening one of the best in a long line of Grade-A MTR productions.

 The Duncan Sheik-Steven Sater adaptation of German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1906 drama Frühlings Erwachen broke new musical theater ground a dozen years ago by tackling such edgy topics as child abuse, S&M, incest, abortion, and suicide among teenagers just now awakening to their sexuality.

 Sater’s streamlining of Wedekind’s melodramatic storylines, singer-songwriter-pop star Sheik’s catchy alternative rock score, and Bill T. Jones’ brilliantly innovative choreography all combined to make Spring Awakening a Broadway hit.

The show begins quietly, with innocent but sexually inquisitive girl-next-door Wendla wondering if she’ll ever be told the truth about man-woman relations in “Mama Who Bore Me.”

 Before long, however, the song has taken on a girl-band rock beat echoed by the boys when handsome, popular, self-confident Melchior and introverted, inhibited, wet-dream-plagued Moritz’s Latin class suddenly erupts into the testosterone-fueled chords of “The Bitch Of Living” and later in a full-cast showstopper (“Totally Fucked”) that reveals the teens’ raging desires, their unfulfilled sexual wants, and their dissatisfaction with the world around them.

Without these musical numbers and The Pink Floyd-esque “Touch Me,” the anthem-like “I Believe,” and the heartbreaking “Left Behind,” Spring Awakening would simply be an abbreviated version of a dated German play. With them, it becomes something both extraordinary and contemporary, as if 21st-century souls were inhabiting these long-deceased youths.

 Making her MTR directorial debut, Sarah Yejin Hahm proves herself an actor’s director par excelence, eliciting one subtly shaded performance after another without a hint of “musical theater acting” in the bunch.

Daniela Silva, in particular, gives Wendla an emotional depth I’ve rarely seen in the role, her eyes speaking volumes, her vocals simply gorgeous. Tim Frangos not only looks every bit the Katy Perry teenage dream the role is written to be, the USC sophomore reveals the darkness between Melchior’s golden boy exterior. Austin Karkowsky virtually reinvents Moritz as the victim of his own sweetness and innocence in a world where sweet and innocent don’t do a boy much good. (Both male leads score vocally as well.)

 Tyler Joseph Ellis (Hanschen), Trevor Keyfauver, Evan Macedo (Georg), Terry Mullany (Otto), and Cole Slater (Ernst) provide topnotch support as Melchi and Moritz’s fellow middle schoolers, with Ellis and Slater earning bonus points for a touchingly played boys-in-love scene that for once puts the accent on love.

 Zoe D’Andrea (Martha), Samantha Short (Ilse), Emerson Taylor (Anna), and Tata Vivas (Thea) are all terrific as Wendla’s frisky, inquisitive classmates, D’Andrea and Short revealing impressive power pipes in “The Dark I Know Well.”

Adult roles are in the more than capable hands of Liz Buzbee, Ido Gal, Alexis MacAdam, and Daniel Murphy, each of whom gets to play at least one sympathetic and one not-so-nice grownup.

 Spring Awakening’s original Broadway choreography’s distinctive stomps and back kicks and leaps and jumps are so identified with the show, it’s hard for a choreographer to avoid hints of them, just one reason why Juan Miguel Posada’s highly stylized moves, hands, arms, and bodies playing as much a part as feet and legs, are so jaw-droppingly original … and exciting as all get-out.

 Vocals are in the more than capable hands of musical director Katie Kivinski, who also plays piano in Spring Awakening’s pro-caliber student orchestra (joined by Randon Davitt, Jae Hoon Lee, Mica Nafshun-Bone, Harrison Poe, and Mikey Takla) under the expert baton of conductor Stephen Jensen, and sound designer Joy Cheever’s subtly amped voices are skillfully mixed with live instrumentals.

MTR’s all-student latest scores high design marks as well, beginning with scenic designer Jordan Fox’s rose-garden-evoking set, one whose three massive crosses serve as a reminder throughout of the religiously oppressive world in which these teenagers live.

Gabby Fricklass’s lighting design is a stunner too and Samhaoir Ruland’s costumes have a eye-catching contemporary-meets-period flair.

Stephen Jung is assistant musical director. Nick Kassoy is associate lighting designer. Fox is technical director.

Damaris Eddy is production stage manager and Beth Yeo is assistant stage manager.

 Spring Awakening is produced by Jamie Salinger and Sean Soper. Poe is associate producer.

I’ve now seen fifteen different Spring Awakenings and twenty-two Musical Theatre Repertory productions in all This latest is both Spring Awakening and MTR at their excitingly innovative best.

Massman Theatre at USC.
www.uscmtr.com

–Steven Stanley
January 17, 2019
Photos: Austin Dalgleish

Tags: Duncan ShEIk, Frank Wedekind, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre Repertory, Steven Sater