American Idiot....

[minesayrejoice]

.....is awesomesauce. I can't believe there isn't a thread for it!

Discuss.

[scarlet]

this is the review I wrote when I saw the show the first time.

Green Day's American Idiot CD came out in 2004 and their 21st Century Breakdown in 2009. And at some point, someone decided that a combination of these CDs would make a good musical. And I must admit, the music is great, and the performances enjoyable, but in the end (as my sister cogently put it), this played more like a rock concert trying to be a Broadway musical than a true rock musical.

A number of on-line posters have commented that the show has no story, but in my eyes, it has too many stories and not enough book. What I mean by that is that the show attempts to tell the story of 3 young men (which I feel is one or perhaps even two too many) but tells it almost entirely through music, with some narration, but no actual dialogue (at least none I can remember). The three youngsters are Johnny (John Gallagher Jr), the "main" character and our narrator and his friends Will and Tunny. After a rousing full company opening number of the title song, the three friends plan on leaving home for the big city. But Will's escape is thwarted by his girlfriend's unplanned pregnancy and he is relegated to the sidelines for much of the rest of the show. Literally. Michael Esper spends most of the show sitting on a sofa downstage, only occasionally interacting with other characters, usually his girlfriend who eventually leaves him and takes their child with her. I have no idea why the sofa stays on the stage throughout most of the show, at times it was very distracting to have it in my field of vision, and I wonder if it blocks the view of people on that side of the theater. Tunny (Stark Sands), quickly disillusioned by life in the city, joins the Army (or perhaps it's the Marines?) and ends up wounded in battle. Johnny finds himself torn between two people in his life, drug dealer St. Jimmy (a very creepy Tony Vincent), and a beautiful girl referred to as Whatsername (the radiant Rebecca Naomi Jones).

As I mentioned, the music is wonderful, and while it is familiar Green Day songs, the orchestrations have been altered enough to make them feel new. However, they ARE songs written for recordings and concerts, so they have the typical repeated chorus and bridge structure that felt a bit repetitive in a musical theater setting, where songs are often more verse heavy in order to propel action or character development. The costumes are for the most part non-descript, being normal street clothes of our time with little chance to stand out. The set is fairly bare, a back wall covered in newspaper and sprinkled with video screens and flashing lights, a staircase on the stage right reaching up to the high up to the rafters, a movable staircase that spends most of its time upstage center and the aforementioned sofa downstage. The least successful part of the show for me was the choreography. Most of the time I felt that I was stuck in a loud rock club watching a bunch of alcohol soaked twenty somethings gyrating out of time to the music. The frequently flashing lighting was also a bit of a problem, especially since I was recovering from a migraine.

If the show was a movie, I think it would definitely rate a PG13 or possibly even an R rating. There are multiple uses of the word f**k, which as often happens, got a laugh the first time it was uttered. There is also very graphic depiction of both sex and intravenous drug use. While this is not surprising, since the lyrics of the original CDs are labeled as explicit, what I did find surprising was the number of pre-teens in the audience.

Someone asked me if I would see the show again. No, I don't think so, I think I'll stick to listening to the cast recording and the original Green Day source material. But not at work, the language would not go over well there.

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I did end up seeing it a second time, when Melissa Etheridge was playing St. Jimmy. I enjoyed it more this time, enjoying Van Hughes as Johnny more than John Gallagher. Also, Melissa was incredible as St. Jimmy and this time I could actually understand the lyrics.