Young love—always complicated and often tortured—is the subject of Spring Awakening, an arch, and sometimes baffling, exploration of teenaged lust and angst set late in 19th century Germany. When Round House Theatre’s version of the celebrated Broadway smash finds its footing, here and there, it bounds with a self-assured and thrilling forward thrust. These moments, sadly, are rare and arrive too late. Like a wallflower at junior prom, the show mostly ambles awkwardly from one song to the next.

At the center of the dance are Wendla and Melchior (played here by Cristina Sastre and Evan Daves, respectively), the main lovers in this adaptation of a once-subversive 1891 play of the same name by Frank Wedekind.

Reworked for a modern audience by Steven Sater’s book and lyrics and Duncan Sheik’s alt-rock song stylings, Spring Awakening garnered eight Tony awards upon its Broadway debut in 2006, launched the careers of Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff (future Glee stars), and proved the Great White Way had finally become a shared playground between young and old.

Wedekind’s narrative, which Sater’s book follows beat-for-beat, follows a group of pubescent girls and boys as they discover sexuality and adulthood. More a series of vignettes than an overarching story, Spring Awakening sets youth decay against the backdrop of highly tuneful songs. Martha (Chani Wereley) reveals she’s been physically and sexually abused by her father. Moritz (Sean Watkinson), a sweet misfit with a stutter, flunks out of school and struggles to find his place. Wendla and Melchior—well, that thread ends in at least one tragedy. The lone glimmer of hope for the future arrives late in the production, with a fleeting same-sex kiss.

Any regional production of Spring Awakening, which hinges on young talent, risks suffering by comparison to the original powerhouse wunderkinds, whose sterling performances are readily available online. These songs—big and open-hearted—are not technically complex, nor melodically spare. But they demand an ease of delivery and plenty of melodrama, a tightrope few unseasoned performers can traverse without peril.

So, this version of Spring Awakening—directed by Alan Paul—frequently feels, and falls, flat. Even if you set aside the technical disruption on opening night that led to a hard stop—a 15-minute, literal showstopper (“The Bitch of the Living,” indeed)—from which this cast and crew recovered with aplomb, it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that the material may too big to succeed.

Except, things came together splendidly, during a better, figurative showstopper called “Totally Fucked” late in the second act. And for those three minutes, the show was anything but.

Spring Awakening runs at Round House Theatre through Feb. 23. Tickets $56-$78. Runtime two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission.