It was 20 years before Frank Wedekind's 1890 play Spring Awakening: A Children's Tragedy could be performed in its native Germany. At first only legendary director Max Reinhardt had enough juice to produce it. The play was considered so pornographic that only a single performance was allowed for a limited audience in New York City, and it was still being censored in England well into the 1960s. It's the story of a teenage boy and girl who have sex, and the bittersweet repercussions of their passionate tryst in a hayloft.

In 2006, pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik ("Barely Breathing") and lyricist Steven Sater collaborated on a musical adaptation, which ran for 888 performances on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Musical. The dallying couple, Melchior and Wendla, were played by Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele, both of whom later joined the cast of Glee.

One of the play's major themes is how young people deal with sexuality - theirs and others' - in the absence of accurate information and guidance from adults. This is especially difficult when some of those young people find themselves feeling antiauthoritarian or homosexual desires in a deeply repressive, unfair, often abusive culture. It can be more than young people can handle, a situation that all too frequently ends (as it does for one character in Spring Awakening) in the worst possible tragedy.

Typical of the adult content of the show is its big Act II anthem, "Totally F***ed." We at the Weekly Volcano were delighted to hand out five pairs of tickets to readers who were able to demonstrate they had once been in that titular situation.

I talked to Rachel Geisler, the actress who'll play Wendla's friend Anna in the touring show at Broadway Center for the Performing Arts this Saturday. She says Anna and the other young characters are "going through things all teenagers go through. ... It's really a coming-of-age story about growing up in general. ... (They're) asking questions  that everybody's too afraid to talk about, and that paves the way for certain mistakes that are made."

I asked her how different this production would be from the famously racy Broadway version.  She says, "We recreate the Broadway production. It's the same, (but) there's nothing gratuitous in the show. It's very real." I asked her if the show might be too intense for younger audience members. "I think it's about the maturity of the child," she replied, "and also, probably, the relationship (between) the parents and the child, and (whether the child is) ready to confront these issues. ... I think our show promotes communication between adults and children."

For all its poignancy and pain, Spring Awakening is, first and foremost, a pop-rock opera about young love and passion. "My favorite song to perform," says Geisler, "is a song called ‘Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise).' All the girls sing it together at the start of the show, and it's a great bonding experience. ... (It's about) the frustration of having so many questions and having none of them answered, whether it's where babies come from or about crushes on boys in school. My favorite song to watch is when the boys do ‘Bitch of Living.' It's one of the coolest rock star moments I've ever seen on a stage."

Spring Awakening

Saturday, Jan. 22, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., $38–$80
Pantages Theater, 901 Broadway, Tacoma
253.591.5890