Spring Awakening is a newish (2006) musical based on an old and controversial play. Frank Wedekind's original Spring Awakening dates from 1891 but its focus on the perils of sexual and reproductive ignorance means it seems to have struggled for performance since.

The songs in the musical are modern, but the setting remains a repressive community in late-19th-century Germany where the boys are trained in a rote-learning militaristic repressive school and the girls are told stories about the stork bringing babies.

When Wendla (Kaitlin Nihill) tries to find out from her mother (Kelda McManus) where babies actually come from, she is told nothing that will help her navigate puberty and relationships.

When Melchior (Callum Bodman), who seems to have found some factual information in books, tries to help flailing and failing classmate Moritz (Pip Carroll) deal with erotic dreams, he runs into real trouble from the school authorities.

Martha (Tegan Braithwaite in a sensitive performance) is clearly being abused at home and Ilse (Kashmira Mohamed Zagor) has escaped home only to find further mistreatment.

Wendla and Melchior stumble into a sexual relationship and Moritz stumbles toward destruction. Only Ernst (Jake Willis) and Hanschen (Lachlan Agett) seem able for the moment to arrive somewhere happy as they declare a love that ironically their society will not condone.

Directors Grant Pegg and Kelly Roberts have put together a young and forceful cast, ably aided by Kelda McManus and David Cannell, the older players who do all the adult roles, from school teachers to mothers and fathers. Nihill's fragile Wendla and Bodman as the clever Melchior do very well as the central pair. Carroll's tormented Moritz and Zagor's world-weary Ilse balance each other beautifully; he does not know enough to survive and she knows too much.

This is not a dancing musical but there is a great deal of intelligent grouping and energetic movement on Chris Zuber's evocatively bare wooden set. The musicians are tucked up the back behind it and audience members can sit on three sides, unusual in musicals.

Hamish McConchie's lighting makes excellent use of modern technology to support the show rather than to show off. Only the sound seemed off its game on opening night; it was not always possible to hear the words of songs one might have been hearing for the first time.

It is interesting that the musical is rather more explicit about four-letter language and masturbation than the play, but baulks at the rape at the centre of the original text and introduces a sentimental element. However, this Spring Awakening remains a warning that there is no bliss in ignorance.