Smash hit

6 From play into musical

The playwright Steven Sater discovered Spring Awakening at an early age: “I always thought of it as an opera-in-waiting. It was so full of yearning, adolescent desire and rebellion.” Melchior’s story is key — he’s “a boy who thinks he can solve the world through his mind”, but is thrown into confusion by events around him. “He gets screwed by the system. Somehow, he has to realise life is worth living.” The great discovery was that the songs should be in a completely different register to the dialogue scenes, plunging the children into their inner turmoil.

7 Songs from the heart

The composer Duncan Sheik isn’t a fan of musicals — some shows “make me want to stick a steak knife in my thigh”. When he first discussed the play, however, “the light bulb that went on in my head was, ‘What if you had all the aesthetic trappings of the 19th century, but with music related to what 99% of young people listen to?’ ” The songs aim not to tell the story, but to “deepen an emotional moment”. Sater says there’s no cool distance in Sheik’s music: “These songs are from the heart.”

8 School of shame

Michael Mayer’s production keeps the story austere and intimate (there are some seats on stage), bringing the children’s stumbles and swagger closer, while the choreographer Bill T Jones translates the kids’ yearning into an ecstatic semaphore. Sater says that casting is tricky: “You need actors who can do classical-theatre repression, then open up in the songs.” Some of the cast will make their stage debut in the show (the youngest is just 16). At an early rehearsal, a “school of shame” saw the actors squirm as they discussed communal showers, inappropriate crushes, schoolroom humiliations — helping them own the blushful material.

9 Happy endings?

The creators shape Melchior’s journey into that of an empathetic hero, rather than, as Sheik says, “a bratty kid who rapes a girl”. Achieving a hopeful yet unsentimental ending was a headache. They had planned to keep the mysterious Masked Man, whom Melchior meets in a graveyard, but couldn’t make it work. “There were years and years of drafts,” Sater groans, but he resisted quick solutions. The eventual ending retains some ambiguity — after all, says Sheik, “these are children who ultimately are going to be parents of the Nazis. It’s neither happy nor tragic: an uncomfortable place to land a piece of theatre”.

10 We need to talk about Melchior

Why has this take on a relatively obscure German drama been such a success? It won rave reviews and eight Tony awards, including best musical, when it opened on Broadway in 2006. The show’s creators say they are surprised it appeals to families; it’s a starting point for all those awkward conversations between parents and children that are bred in the bone, and whose avoidance curdles into tragedy in the play. “You don’t watch it as a parent or adult,” Sater says. “You experience all that pain and yearning yourself.”

Spring Awakening opens at the Lyric Hammersmith, W6, on January 23

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