In the original play, Melchior actually did rape Wendla. And I agree with everything else.
"I'm an illusion of your youth, a manifestation of the feelings in your adolescent heart." - Haruko Haruhara
True. And actually, they were GOING to have the rape in the musical. At the end of the song 'I Believe' Wendla screams in an obviously get-off-me way. However, when it went to Broadway, they wanted it to seem more consensual so they changed it.
Despite being a fan I do agree with a lot of your criticisms, but here's my two cents (I realize, waaaay after this was originally posted) on a couple of them...
I don't think you have to like Melchior. (After seeing the show, my mom rather wisely stated, "Melchior's an interesting person but I'd never want to be friends with him.") I definitely won't argue that he raped her — she can't really consent to something she doesn't understand, so there isn't really a way for him to be completely off the hook with that accusation regardless of how the scene comes off. However, I'm not sure it changes the moral all that much whether you consider him to have taken advantage of her or not. I think the moral is not really that "the adults are right and sex is bad" or "the kids are right and sex is good" but more that... openness and understanding about sex are important. This might not have happened this way if Melchior had not been left to figure out and form opinions on sex on his own (after all, we're all sort of genre savvy in a way he isn't — he's never had someone beat into his subconscious that 'no means no' or ever really been exposed to the reality of teenage pregnancy and all that — consider how shocking it apparently is that he's reading Faust). And if Wendla had known what she was getting herself into, she hopefully wouldn't have consented at all ("why didn't you tell me everything")? I think it's natural to assume the show wants us to agree with Melchior, especially as he's presented to be so smart and cool in the eyes of the other kids and even some of the adults... but I think the plot is meant to prove him wrong. He has some good ideas, sure, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's doing as much as he thinks he does.
I think A lot of the awkwardness revolving the "is it rape?" debate comes from the fact that, as other commenters have said, in the play the musical's based on it WAS rape... and the disturbing thing about that is thanks to things such as values dissonance, in the play... the ending is basically the same. Melchior does not really ever get punished for raping Wendla, and in fact it's hardly discussed at all. The musical is basically faced with two choices when you think about it: keep it outright rape and overhaul the second act to make it actually reflect the reality of rape as we know it, OR change the scene to make the resulting events less unsettling. I think the angle Steven Sater (the book writer of the musical) is trying to take is that it's right that Melchior and Wendla should be allowed to have this sexual experience, it's just wrong that they're doing it under these horrible circumstances. However, I'm not really sure, and I wish the creative team would discuss this more honestly as it's always made me uncomfortable (there are videos from this panel thing that Spring Awakening did with Degrassi, and in it they discuss a date rape scene in Degrassi... and THEN talk about the sex scene in Spring Awakening and Rosie O'Donnell (the sort of moderator of the discussion) starts talking about how "beautiful" it is. It STILL infuriates me just thinking about it.)
And yes, too bad about the lack of lesbians (and as a bisexual girl I get very annoyed when people overlook what I see to be the obvious conclusion that Hanschen, who masturbates to a picture of a girl in one scene and kisses a boy in another, might be bi- or pansexual, but I digress), but to the original playwright's credit, he did have, to my knowledge, at least a singular lesbian in one of his plays after Spring Awakening. (And actually, though this is a whole other potential topic for discussion... I once read an essay that pointed out that all of the relationships in Spring Awakening that have any kind of sexual aspects (such as Martha and her abusive father, Ilse and the artists, Melchior and Wendla...) also involve violence against women. Except for one, of course, that being the relationship with no women — Hanschen and Ernst. This person seemed to be suggesting that their original purpose for being in the story was to make that point, whatever you interpret that point to be. Just some food for thought.)
So yeah. Sorry for vomiting text all over your review comments :P
Rereading my crazy long comment the next day, wanted to clarify something I worded incredibly badly: I mean, I definitely won't argue *with the idea that he raped her*, as in I think that is a legitimate interpretation of the scene (that I wish more people would acknowledge). I didn't mean to contradict myself there.
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What was the point?!
I saw Spring Awakening with my ex-girlfriend, and we came into it with very few expectations, knowing virtually nothing about the story, characters or style of it except that it was popular. While the performances themselves were very good we had fun tearing the story apart over dinner. We're both writers, so the plot inconsistencies bugged us too much, and neither of us could hum a single song when it was over. When we asked ourselves "When did we get to High School Musical?" it was a bad sign.
The first act on its own is good enough, it sets up a bunch of plot threads and builds us up to the two main characters having sex. Fine enough. But other than the pregnancy there was no real development that came from it in the characters themselves, they're just accessories to the plot. Likewise, the other plot threads like the girls who were abused by their fathers and the gay couple got one song and then were forgotten about with no closure. The entire second act seemed to just rush towards the finish, and when the curtain finally dropped we had no idea what to take from it.
Furthermore, the whole thing seemed to shoot its own moral in the foot. So parents shelter their kids from sexual topics and dislike it when their kids fool around, which just tempts them further. Fine, simple enough message. But when the kids then get themselves into huge trouble because they do things without thinking with their brains (though the guys were obviously thinking with something else) we're supposed to side with the kids? When two of them die? Huh?
We both had trouble relating to and liking Melchior since he just seemed like a pompous asshole, and the sex scene was uncomfortably close to a rape for both of us since she told him to stop at one point. The sex scene (which we saw twice!) was just uncomfortable, I would have liked it if they'd just cut to black on it, but we saw the whole thing. Melchior in general didn't endear himself to us, he seemed like a whiny self-entitled little shit who banked far too much on being "edgy". In fact, that was our general problem with the play. It presented itself as being edgy, but it fell into the same cliches and played them totally straight, so we walked out of there wondering where two and a half hours had gone and just what the point of it all was.
But most of all, we were disappointed by the lack of lesbians.