Review: A stunner of a lead performance in ‘Spring Awakening’ by Porchlight Music Theatre

I first saw “Spring Awakening,” the Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater musical about adults failing their children by confining them to sexual ignorance, more than 15 years ago. For a whole host of reasons, I doubt this show would be created now, certainly not without a lot of angst in the process. But at Porchlight Music Theatre on Saturday, I was struck by how well this superb material holds up to our changed moment. The Tony Award went to the right show that year.

“Spring Awakening” is a tricky beast not least because so many of the original choices made by the original director, Michael Mayer, appear baked into the material. In essence, the show’s creative team created one overarching device: the schoolchildren first imagined by Frank Wedekind in his play of the same name inhabit Germany in the late 19th century. But when they sing about their feelings and emotions, they pull out microphones from their dresses or breast pockets and rock out. The original Bill T. Jones choreography, a kind of emotive punk expressionism, haunts the show too.

All that said, Brenda Didier, the director and choreographer of the new Chicago production from Porchlight, has all kinds of fresh ideas. She retains that basic structure, as above, but avoids the original sharp declination, preferring a more organic approach. That works very well. She makes fine use of the intimate staging and wide stage, spreading the band (I believe these are the original orchestrations without much adjustment) around the space so that the music nicely envelops the performers. And, best of all, she avoids the sentimentality of other local treatments of this show, retaining the sense of humor in material designed above all to show the spirit and resilience of young people. You get the sense here of ordinary kids, not Broadway actors, smart and vital and needing only to be set free. It’s all very moving.

Much of this flows from a truly knockout performance from 18-year-old Maya Lou Hlava in the lead role of Wendla. Hlava is an experienced actor although still a senior at Evanston Township High School and, frankly, she does things here that few 18 years old have learned to do on a stage. Most notable is her lived presence, her ability to stay in the moment and make each song appear felt and experienced in real time. Add in a pitch-perfect vocal performance and a profound understanding of her character and you have a really fine piece of work that portends incredibly well. If she can do all this now, who knows what she will be able to do in the future.

Didier skewed the whole cast pretty young, as is appropriate, although that still meant Hlava was working with college graduates. The remainder of the youthful principal cast — Ariana Burks as Martha, Jack DeCesare as Melchior, Quinn Kelch as Moritz, Maddy Kelly as Thea, John Marshall Jr. as Hanschen — all feel fully authentic and the vocal work ranges from solid to excellent. I’ve always felt the adult authority figures, played here by McKinley Carter and Michael Joseph Mitchell, to be underwritten and overly stereotypical, but Carter especially does what she can to humanize a character within a musical that needs to be sharply critical of teachers and parents to work.

But it’s Hlava’s Wendla who functions as the show’s moral conscience and whose relationship with DeCesare’s Melchior feels as real as can be.

If you’ve never seen “Spring Awakening,” or want to relive a score that broke a lot of tired rules back in its day, here is your chance. This is the best local production of this work to date: Porchlight has developed an enveloping experience and a reminder that great, young ensembles always have been the Chicago theater’s greatest strength.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “Spring Awakening”

When: Through June 2

Where: Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn St.

Running time: 2 hours, 30 mins.

Tickets: $42-74 at 773-777-9884 or porchlightmusictheater.org