With so much grumbling over the recent glut of “jukebox musicals,” an entire genre of music has been slighted unfairly. Rock ‘n’ roll remains a supremely valid form of musical expression for the right characters in the right show; the thought of today’s agitated youth employing the jazzy chromaticisms of, say, “West Side Story” is as anachronistic as the thought of Leonard Bernstein’s actors in 1957 singing in the style of operettas like the “The Merry Widow.”

And yet, ever since the premature death of “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson in 1996, rock has been used effectively in a stage musical exactly once: in Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s ferocious “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”

Make that twice. Duncan Sheik, a one-time pop composer (“Barely Breathing”) who has gradually put down roots in the theater world, and lyricist-bookwriter Steven Sater have converted Frank Wedekind’s torrid 1891 play “Spring Awakening” into that rarest of creatures: a musical that speaks the language of its youthful characters with the melodic integrity and complexity that they deserve.

Along with director Michael Mayer, who navigates the Atlantic Theater Company’s bare stage in any number of surprising directions, they have made an unlikely setting – puritanical, small-town 1890s Germany – instantly recognizable to anyone who has squirmed through the shames and solaces of adolescence.

Two relative naifs, the tormented Moritz (John Gallagher Jr., the guilt-struck teen from “Rabbit Hole”) and the restless Wendla (Lea Michele), have little in common beyond an awed fascination with the worldly, atheistic Melchior (Jonathan Groff). Both seek knowledge from him; both are ill equipped to deal with that knowledge once they receive it.

“O, I’m gonna be wounded,” several characters sing at various points.”O,I’m gonna be your wound.” Amid the various acts depicted on-stage – which include masturbation, a harrowing instance of S&M, same-sex encounters, and a sexual interlude that hovers perilously close to rape – the boundaries between knowledge (particularly of the carnal variety) and ignorance prove permeable and treacherous.

Mr.Sheik, appropriately enough, conveys this confusion with a variety of surging, convulsive melodies. Many of his songs begin with vocal dissonances that slide with shocking ease into haunting melodies. He isn’t afraid to rough up his arrangements here and there: Some of Moritz’s songs sound like the Violent Femmes, of all bands. But the Act II ballad “Left Behind” has no match for sheer beauty in the history of rock musicals, and a half-dozen other songs aren’t far behind.

Mr. Sater’s lyrics operate within a more circumscribed sphere – the word “yearning” pops up in no fewer than three different songs, and it could fit easily into another five. Still, he has tightened Wedekind’s narrative admirably, and his distillations of youthful torment are completely believable.

“History … / Home alone on a school night” might strike the adult listener as a bit melodramatic,but who can honestly say they didn’t share those sentiments as a teenager? And if the beguiling plasticity of pop has ever been described more crisply than in this lyric, I haven’t come across it:

I go up to my room, turn the stereo on,
Shoot up some you in the You of some song.

Renowned modern-dance choreographer Bill T. Jones builds on his impressive work in “The Seven,” another recent off-Broadway musical that reached out to modern audiences. Mr. Jones has created a totemic, tucked-in arm movement that is both provocative and protective – in other words, an ideal expression of adolescence. This singular sequence pops up throughout the musical: fast and slow, tentative and furious, triumphant and terrified – this sinuous, deceptively simple movement yields maximum results in Messrs. Jones and Mayer’s deft hands.

The three young leads carry the lion’s share of the musical as well as the psychological weight, although Lauren Pritchard makes a memorable cameo as the young bohemian Ilse. Her fateful encounter with a despondent Moritz,punctuated with the haunting ballad “Blue Wind,” symbolizes both an alternate future and an irretrievable past. Lilli Cooper is also impressive in her small role, although her solo about sexual victimhood (bathed in red neon light, no less) is one of the few times Messrs. Sheik and Sater opt for the well-traveled path.

This is not the only misstep in “Spring Awakening.” Wedekind’s hugely problematic ending – an unrewarding mix of whimsy and portent involving a headless ghost and a masked man – has been replaced by a communal apotheosis that is only slightly less awkward. And while the writers have excised much of the grown-ups’ silly names and actions from the original, enough remains to put the two adult actors, Frank Wood and Mary McCann, at an almost insurmountable disadvantage.

But Mr. Mayer’s superbly assembled cast of youths meets every one of the script’s numerous challenges. I’ve named about half of them already, but here they are again, in alphabetical order: Skylar Astin, Lilli Cooper, John Gallagher Jr., Gideon Glick, Jonathan Groff, Brian Johnson, Lea Michele, Lauren Pritchard, Phoebe Strole, Jonathan B. Wright, and Remy Zaken.

Remember those names. Their uniform excellence makes it hard to know which ones will emerge, but I believe several will become important stage actors in the very near future, just as the last decade has seen Taye Diggs, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Idina Menzel, and Anthony Rapp graduate from “Rent.”

“Rent” features a slightly older company and a broader musical palette. But while the individual personalities shine through Larson’s through-sung work with sharper clarity, the Wedekind material derives so much of its emotional force from its stultifying setting that the clenched, almost numbed characterizations actually ring true.

As it happens, “Rent” opened off-Broadway 10 years and five months ago, which allows me to make the following statement with confidence: “Spring Awakening” is the most thrilling rock musical of the last decade.

Until July 9 (336 W. 20th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-239-6200).

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The Atlantic has shown a knack for programming “hot” playwrights this season – and the synchronicities are getting closer and closer. Its first production,a pairing of Harold Pinter one-acts, opened about a month after Mr. Pinter was named this year’s Nobel Prize recipient for literature. Next up was “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” by Martin McDonagh, whose short film won him an Oscar less than a week later.

And now Wedekind, a writer who goes years between any sort of recognition, can also be spotted on the big screen. “Pandora’s Box” (reviewed by Nicolas Rapold on page 17) the silent Louise Brooks film based on one of Wedekind’s pioneering “Lulu” plays, begins a two-week run at Film Forum today. Lest you think the masturbating youths of “Spring Awakening” mark some sort of precedent on shock value, revered film critic David Thomson calls this 1928 scorcher “still among the most erotic films ever made.”