Wake yourselves up

The best thing about the Lake City Playhouse production of "Spring Awakening?" The two songs with the unprintable titles.

First, German schoolboys in dour 1890s uniforms are slaving away at their Latin lessons - then, next thing you know, they're bouncing on top of their desks, screaming their defiance at authority figures who care more about maintaining power than actually, you know, educating anybody. As they tell us in song, life's a (bad word), and they're totally (another bad word).

Director George Green's production catches the energy of youthful defiance. And with the musical's parents and teachers offering nothing but prohibitions and stonewalling, the frustrations of youth are understandable. The characters in Frank Wedekind's 130-year-old play may seem hopelessly naive: They don't even know about birds-and-bees basics (much less about abuse or abortion or homosexual desire ... you get the picture). But can today's parents claim that, without exception, they have fully informed their children about abstinence and contraception, STDs and suicide prevention? (I didn't think so.)

Green, who also appears in multiple male-authority-figure roles, keeps the action moving quickly. And Siri Hafso, who also appears as the ghostly exile Ilse, has choreographed spasmodic torso-torques for the thumping beat of those off-color protest songs. (Flashes of inner thigh eroticize the female chorus, even if they are wrapped up in Victorian-era frocks.)

The ensemble's standout performance comes from Jordan Taylor as the central character, Melchior, a defiant intellectual who questions authority, then finds himself advising his neurotic best friend and getting involved in a high-stakes, slightly kinky relationship with sensitive-but-naive Wendla (Abby Anderson).

For the lead couple's love-making, the staging of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's 2006 musical asks for a ritualistic approach, with Melchior and Wendla swung on a platform by chorus members: Their anxiety and gratitude about sex is shared - visually, forcefully - by everyone. It's a beautiful sequence, aided by all the dangling bulbs in Dan Heggem's lighting design.

The production's not perfect, of course. The pace lags in the second act, with over-elaborated songs about the characters' emotional crises alternating with sudden, melodramatic plot developments. And while Ross Mumford has the right kind of mournful goth eyes as neurotic Moritz, he settles for whiny stereotype when instead he could be pursuing a teenage boy's desperate desire to learn more about girls, himself and life.

"Spring Awakening" has its agenda, of course. (It's a far cry from Lake City's Sept. 15 season opener, "Oklahoma!") For example, the love duet that the leading couple sings ("The Word of Your Body") is reprised by two eager but tentative gay men. It's a nice touch, demonstrating a) that straight people aren't the only ones capable of love, and b) that Kootenai County won't explode if musicals other than "Oklahoma!" are performed around here.

"Spring Awakening" runs through Aug. 11 (Thursday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.) at Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d'Alene. Tickets: $15; $11, student rush. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.