The kids are alright, but the show ...

If you want to catch one of the most highly polished middle school shows you'll probably ever see, check out the new musical "13," which opened Sunday at the Mark Taper Forum. A collaboration between composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown, best known for his Tony-winning score for "Parade," and children's book author Dan Elish, this spirited theatrical offering is like an "Afterschool Special" staged with superlative artistry and verve.

I'm sorry, early adolescence isn't a phase you're eager to revisit? You'd rather not recall being the last to get picked in gym class or the pimples that fiendishly erupted just in time for your first date? Understood. But if you enjoyed a relatively benign puberty (don't rub it in) and you have little Shirley Temples at home dying to get out there and perform, this is the family outing you've been waiting for. The rest of us can meet at a little bar I know in Hollywood. The first round is on me.

Directed by Todd Graff, whose film "Camp" delved memorably into the misfit world of gung-ho musical theater youths, the production, hampered by a hackneyed book, features a mostly delightful teen cast that compensates for the work's obvious deficiencies. Some sing or dance better than they act, but all the performers work their special charms as though the audience were in control of the next increase in their allowance.

The execution is what distinguishes this otherwise generic tale about a likable Jewish kid who has moved from New York City to Appleton, Ind., a few weeks before his bar mitzvah. Angry at his mom for getting divorced and taking him away from all his friends back home, Evan (an attractively nebbishy Ricky Ashley) is determined to get all the cool kids to come to his celebration, though he's going to have to jump through a lot of hoops -- and learn the real lesson of becoming a man -- to get his wish.

One of those hoops involves Archie (Tyler Mann, sporting a mini mop of Art Garfunkel hair), a "special needs" student who relies on crutches to get around. He knows that Evan doesn't want him to attend -- it would be invitation suicide if the popular crowd found out he was going.

Alert to the danger, Archie threatens to show up anyway if Evan doesn't set him up on a date with the beauty queen, Kendra (a lithe and limber Emma Degerstedt), who has fallen hard for Brett (J.D. Phillips), the star of the football team.