Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ lands on Broadway (VIDEO)

Celebrated album recycled into a loud musical show

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Unaware of the punk-pop group Green Day's "American Idiot" concept album, I attended the new Broadway show made from it completely blind.

After things finished up some 90 minutes later, I left the St. James Theatre totally deaf.

Certain colleagues are likely to wax favorably about the bombastic musical attraction that opened Tuesday. It's a wise career move for critics to appear hip, and besides there are good things to be said about the production's artful touches and stormy performances.

Even so, be advised that the thrashing, convulsive and frequently unintelligible theatrical concert that is "American Idiot" will best be appreciated by a younger crowd who care little for Broadway-style musical theater.

A scruffy song cycle with scant dialogue, "American Idiot" bounces off a dime-thin and oft-told storyline by lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong and director Michael Mayer tracing the 21st century blues of three young dudes sick of suburbia and eager to escape to the big city.

A bong-blasted Will (Michael Esper) never even gets past his driveway; stuck with a pregnant sweetie (Mary Faber) and their souring relationship, he idles on the couch. Tunny (Stark Sands) can't deal with urban life and soon turns up as a soldier in combat overseas where he meets a selfless "extraordinary girl" (Christina Sajous) who nurses his wounds.

Meanwhile the central figure, Johnny (John Gallagher, Jr.), aims for rock stardom — what a big surprise — then gets hooked on smack by a charismatic, predatory dealer (Tony Vincent). Johnny enjoys an affair with the luscious Whatsername (Rebecca Naomi Jones) but their romance is wrecked by his drugging.

Ultimately the three buds are reunited back in the parking lot of their neighborhood 7-11, scarred but scarcely the wiser for their separate experiences.

This sketchy if do-able libretto strings along Green Day hits like "Wake Me Up When September Ends" and "21 Guns," strikingly staged by Mayer as a woeful triptych depicting these American idiots in their sorriest situations while the growling ensemble around them fiercely grinds through Steven Hoggett's violent choreography.

During the show's most effective stretches, a hallucinatory quality infuses the mix of hard-driven music, bitter sentiments, furious movement and gritty visuals with a sort of wow-ain't-we-miserable grandeur.

The challenge for anyone whose ears are tuned into theater scores is that many lyrics here are crunched into aural mush by percussive punk music rhythms and loudly blasting sound design. Mayer's series of impressionistic stage pictures convey the intensely unhappy story but adding projected surtitles would enlighten viewers not conversant with the occasionally attractive Green Day songs.

Theatergoers who witnessed Gallagher perform as the suicidal Moritz in "Spring Awakening" — a far more traditional Broadway musical also staged by Mayer — will want to see him flesh out a different kind of alienated soul. A melancholy yet dynamic presence, Gallagher burns through the show's sullen haze of dissatisfaction.

Dozens of video screens and looming walls bannered with media headlines comprise designer Christine Jones' background for the concert-style presentation that situates the band onstage. A crummy couch, a mattress and a couple of movable platforms neatly handle the story's fluent requirements. Andrea Lauer garbs everybody in nasty clothes while Kevin Adams drenches the action in washes of poisonous color.

The overriding problem with this very loud and ultimately tiresome effort is that the story's angry, angst-riddled characters prove to be little more than self-pitying losers bucked up by only their male egos and the women who sustain them. Of course, every generation spawns such feckless fellows and presumably "American Idiot" simply represents the latest class of jerks.

Still, it will be interesting to see whether Green Day's musical celebration of men being stupid draws a substantial audience on Broadway.

"American Idiot" continues an open-end run at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.americanidiotonbroadway.com.