Playwright: music by Duncan Sheik, lyrics and book by Steven Sater, based on the play by Frank Wedekind. At: Griffin Theatre Company at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Phone: 773-975-8150;$28-$38. Runs through: Jan. 8
It was 1891 when Frank Wedekind first cautioned parents against depriving their children of sex education, in a play not seeing the lights of a stage until 1906. You'd think that, a century later, the wisdom of early-age facts-of-life chats would be self-evident. Puberty, experienced first-hand, has always been scarybut rarely fatal to those with elders to provide assurance that its discomforts are only temporary.
How then to account for the shock that accompanied the Broadway premiere of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's 2006 musical adaptation, or the hoards of teenage repeat-playgoers sustaining quick-rotation tours for years after? In our age of mass communication and purported liberality, are there still youngsters suffering under invasion by biological inevitability imprisoning them like an alien occupation? Griffin Theatre Company has been addressing the concerns of this demographic for more than three decades, making this troupe the logical candidate for this first regional production.
Sater's book adheres to musical-play convention, in that the lyrics express characters' inner thoughts (as opposed to the Brechtian practice of externalized sources for vocal turns), but this is no sappy-happy-song-and-dance fest. The actors' costumes come equipped with wireless microphones, and the sole emotions conveyed by our forlorn adolescents are anger and longingthe former in foot-stamping rants like "The Bitch of Living," and the latter in bittersweet duets like "The Word of Your Body," shared by a pair of gay male lovers who regret that their woodland tryst will soon be only a memory. The only hope offered to our suicidal hero, mourning his girl friend's death following a back-alley abortion, is the spectral exhortation of his untimely-fallen companions to continue his efforts to bring about change.
The intimacy of our dramatic universe is well-served by the close quarters of Marianna Csaszar's chain-and-scaffold thrust stage (with the more graphic sim-sex elevated, so that we see torsos and faces, but no naughty bits) as well as the freshness of the ensemble cast led by Josh Salt and Aja Wiltshire as the doomed Melchior and Wendla. Lindsay Leopold's runaway rebel Ilse, however, and her rendition of the gentle "Blue Wind" is what bring home the tragedy of nostalgia, the province of travelers at the end of their journeys afflicting those so recently embarked.