“Spring Awakening” has reopened in Eugene O’Neill Theatre, boasting a new cast of fresh-faced kids. These actors really are young, in their late teens, and early 20s -- by far the most youthful looking ensemble since “Spring Awakening” opened on Broadway nearly two years ago. What they lack in years, these budding performers make up for in passion and zeal.

The role of Melchior is now being handled by Hunter Parrish, who plays Mary Louise Parker's older son on the TV series “Weeds.” Parrish doesn't a terribly strong voice but his singing has a pretty, delicate quality that suits the young Melchior, a proud intellectual rebel who sees through the hypocrisy and lies of his 19th-century German environment.

As Melchior's tormented love interest, Wendla, Alexandra Socha is very impressive, a frighteningly girlish figure with sleepy eyes that all too soon will be widened by love and the cruelty of the world.

The tragic Moritz Stiefel is played by Gerard Canonica who is diminutive and carries a few pounds of baby fat. He delivers Moritz as a spastic underachiever who feels overwhelmed by the world.

When Canonica's Moritz rocks out against the injustice of parents and teachers, there's a new life-or-death urgency to his numbers, as if rock and roll is the only thing that will save his life.

The ironic truth about “Spring Awakening” is that rock may be a release for these beaten-down, repressed school kids, but it also is pure escapism, more likely to defuse their revolutionary energy than harness it for social change.

What comes across again is the sheer beauty of the design of “Spring Awakening” and those heart-pounding songs by composer Duncan Sheik and book writer and lyricist Steven Sater. Without doubt, the score is the most lyrically sophisticated and musically invigorating heard on Broadway in years.

Add in the rejuvenated cast, and you have a show that looks like it hasn't aged a day.