FAME The Musical has been updated from its 1980 roots with mobile phones, tablets and new arrangements for its 2014 tour.

Likewise, Frank Wedekind’s once banned Spring Awakening returns in a new version for today by young London playwright Anya Reiss with…mobile phones and laptops.

Both works deal with the cauldron of growing up and working out who you are, both involve wasted lives and death at a tender age and both these productions are much more likely to appeal to a young audience than enervated adults.

Produced by impresario Bill Kenwright, Fame The Musical has been revamped with a modern New York skyline, ugly metal frameworks and a rather crowded set by Diego Pitarch that requires constant scenery changes beneath the permanently present band.

There are still too many roles, too many stories and clunky “street” dialogue that may have been modernised to include “dissing” and “hip-hop” but still sounds dated, while Tom de Keyser’s musical supervision and Andy Ralls’s arrangements cannot cover for Fame’s score being so pedestrian, heavy-handed and over-reliant on that self-seeking title number.

Hard Work is the mantra of the High School of Performing Arts and director-choreographer Gary Lloyd’s energetic cast certainly works hard but as the clock ticks past 10pm, Fame is increasingly hard work: a noisy, boorish American show that has had its 15 minutes.

Jodie Steele’s big-voiced, self-destructive Carmen Diaz stands no chance of grabbing the heart, but long-limbed Alex Thomas has bags of presence and a head full of attitude as Tyrone Jackson. In the absence of David Leonard from the past two Theatre Royal pantomimes, you can at least see his daughter, Hermione Lynch, making waves across town as dance tutor Miss Bell.

Faded Fame looks stuck in its original time, particularly now that fame has become an end in itself, and the new show can’t catch up as it struggles unconvincingly to chase fashion.

Its self-obsessed focus is narrow and earnest too, whereas Wedekind’s shock of the old still resonates today with its universal theme of the confusions of the young as they discover sex, buckle under peer pressure to succeed, contemplate escape by suicide – and struggle against the tide of an older generation that fails to understand them (an emotion in common with Fame’s students).

This production marks the launch of a three-year partnership between Headlong – the southern answer to York’s progressive Pilot Theatre – and the Playhouse in a project to champion the work of young directors, in this case Ben Kidd.

His teenage rampage through Spring Awakening is an impressive start. Working in tandem with designer Colin Richmond, there is a highly energised choreography to the play’s progression, with Kidd’s excellent use of Ian William Galloway’s video designs, new technology and schoolroom staples such as row upon row of chairs.

Reiss’s new script lacks the intellectual classroom combat and humour of Alan Bennett’s History Boys but has enough substance to go with the style, backed by the kinetic performances of Aoife Duffin as Wendla Bergman and Oliver Johnstone as Melchior Gabor. Spring re-awakening indeed.

Fame The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday; Spring Awakening, Headlong, Courtyard Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until Saturday. Box office: York, 0844 871 3024 or atg.tickets.com/york; Leeds, 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk