If you haven’t heard of the band Green Day, then you must be living under a rock. Green Day’s influence on the punk scene today cannot be denied. Although they did not invent it, they certainly can be credited with turning a whole new generation onto punk by making it mainstream and cool. That being said, you’d think the new musical, American Idiot, would electrify its audience instead of bore them with an elusive plot.
In this 90-minute intermission-less performance directed by “Spring Awakening’s†Michael Mayer, its characters and plot are simply not there. The story is this: Johnny plans to leave suburbia for the big city with his friends Will and Tunny, but Will’s girl Heather gets pregnant, so now he can’t go, and it’s down to two. They go, and at some point, Tunny ends up in Iraq, loses a leg, and falls in love while Johnny falls for a girl, gets hooked on dope, hits bottom, and in the end, they all return home. Was the trip worth it? Who knows, and more importantly, who cares? No one does because the characters are so minimally developed that we never have a strong feeling about them either way. We really don’t care about anything that happens, anything they do or even how they might end up. Eventually, what happens to them is mostly depressing and very predictable.
With its sparse dialogue, (if you added up all the dialogue in the show, you’ll have about 5 minutes) notably with characters exclaiming lame rebellious phrases such as “this life sucks†and “fuck you,†you start to feel like an idiot for spending your money on a ticket to the show. And after a while, you begin to cringe each time a line is delivered however enthusiastically.
“American Idiot†relies primarily on the songs of Green Day to do the storytelling. The songs included in the show are everything from Green Day’s “American Idiot†album plus two B-sides, four tracks from “21st Century Breakdown,†and one ballad Armstrong wrote for his wife when he was 19. They are all great songs and are interestingly enough sung by multiple players, but they have no real connection with the characters and their stories. And this is where the show loses us.
Undeniably, the best part of the show is the cast which is full of raw talent and energy, especially John Gallagher, Jr. as the lead character, Johnny. He is the most active of the three protagonists on stage, he can play guitar well, and even sounds a bit like Armstrong. Michael Esper who plays Will puts on a good performance although he is basically confined to the couch for most of the show in what we assume is a metaphor of how his character feels about life. Like Esper’s character, Tunny, played by Stark Sands, is mainly on the sidelines and moreover very forgettable as a naive and idealistic soldier who heads out to war. Most of his time onstage is spent laying on a gurney where a female cast member dangles and twirls high above him from midair. Most mentionable is Tony Vincent who plays St. Jimmy. Although not a protagonist, Vincent has a mesmerizing presence onstage along with phenomenal vocals which make him stand out from the rest of the cast.
If you do decide to see the show, do yourself a favor and read the full synopsis beforehand so you’ll actually understand what you’re seeing, because just knowing the songs isn’t going to help. And if you really like Green Day and want to spare yourself the disappointment, then crank up your CD or MP3, or buy a ticket to their concert, because if you go out and buy a ticket to see this Broadway show, then you truly are an American idiot.
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