Cabaret Scenes Theatre Review

It’s rousing. It’s ear-splitting. If you have sensory sensitivity, you may be deaf at the end. The 2004 Green Day album, American Idiot, is now a musical theater production at the St. James Theatre, a show for Generation Y much like Hair is to the Boomers crowd. Resembling a music video, it is flashy and electrifying, ninety minutes with twenty-one songs strung together with a thread of a plot.

American Idiot was conceptualized as a “punk rock opera,” with book and lyrics by Green Day’s head lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong and director Michael Mayer based on a 2004 best-selling album, American Idiot. Inspired by groups like The Who as well as shows like Jesus Christ Superstar and West Side Story, the songs obviously hark back to previous rock groups.

Rudderless rebels without a cause, three disenfranchised youths search for ways to escape the boredom of the suburbs. Their frustration and unrelieved disaffection is as vivid here as it was in director Michael Mayer’s previous Broadway hit, Spring Awakening. John Gallagher, Jr., who won a Tony for his performance in Spring Awakening, portrays Johnny, running off to the city to find himself in sex, drugs and pounding rock and roll. He connects with a young woman called Whatsername, played by Rebecca Naomi Jones. His slide into serious heroin addiction is supported by a nefarious dealer, St. Jimmy, a misnomer, played with vicious cunning and a powerful voice by Tony Vincent.

Secondary skimpy stories follow Will (Michael Esper), trapped with a pregnant girlfriend (Mary Faber). While she manages to deal with the situation, Will stagnates on the sofa. Tunny, played by Stark Sands who made an impact in Journey’s End, joins the military and loses his leg in Iraq. He meets a sympathetic woman called Extraordinary Girl (Christina Sajous). At one point, he takes off to the skies, aided by a wire, with Extraordinary Girl. Was this Mayer being poetic?

The three eventually reunite at the suburban 7-11, hardly less disenfranchised, still singing “Nobody cares. Everybody left you. Nobody likes you.”

Billie Joe Armstrong wrote most of the lyrics of American Idiot except “Rock and Roll Girlfriend” by Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt’s “Nobody Likes You.” Two suites of songs act as bookends: The first suite, “Jesus of Suburbia,” with music of desperation like "City of the Damned" and "I Don't Care," opens the show. “Homecoming” brings it to an end. In between these suites, songs, sometimes emotional like “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” nudge the slight story along, some.

Unfortunately, the characters are more like pencil drawings than detailed oil paintings and all lack development, especially the women. Michael Mayer directs a feverish snapshot of disenfranchisement enhanced by sensory overload of Darrel Maloney’s stabbing video projections and Brian Ronan’s blasting sound design. Christine Jones’s set is eye-catching with a high back wall of videos and posters. Andrea Lauer’s costumes are high school contemporary. The vigorous jump-stamp choreography is by Steven Hoggett and onstage band is theatrical, positioned around the stage and atop the high wall, and Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) has provided strong orchestrations that are the driving force, including a more current Green Day hit, “21 Guns.”

A high-octane bonus on this evening was Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt coming up from the audience to sing “American Idiot” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” The audience leapt to its feet, cast members grabbed cameras, as charged as if they hadn’t been performing at full throttle all evening. American Idiot is the place to go for punk rockers but if you are looking for less aural onslaught in your musical theater, you’ll have to keep looking.

(Pictured: Stark Sands, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Esper. Photo by Paul Kolnik)

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
April 22, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org



	American Idiot St. James Theatre New York, N
It’s rousing. It’s ear-splitting. If you have sensory sensitivity, you may be deaf at the end. The 2004 Green Day album, American Idiot, is now a musical theater production at the St. James Theatre, a show for Generation Y much like Hair is to the Boomers crowd. Resembling a music video, it is flashy and electrifying, ninety minutes with twenty-one songs strung together with a thread of a plot. American Idiot was conceptualized as a “punk rock opera,” with book and lyrics by Green Day’s head lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong and director Michael Mayer based on a 2004 best-selling album, American Idiot. Inspired by groups like The Who as well as shows like Jesus Christ Superstar and West Side Story, the songs obviously hark back to previous rock groups. Rudderless rebels without a cause, three disenfranchised youths search for ways to escape the boredom of the suburbs. Their frustration and unrelieved disaffection is as vivid here as it was in director Michael Mayer’s previous Broadway hit, Spring Awakening. John Gallagher, Jr., who won a Tony for his performance in Spring Awakening, portrays Johnny, running off to the city to find himself in sex, drugs and pounding rock and roll. He connects with a young woman called Whatsername, played by Rebecca Naomi Jones. His slide into serious heroin addiction is supported by a nefarious dealer, St. Jimmy, a misnomer, played with vicious cunning and a powerful voice by Tony Vincent. Secondary skimpy stories follow Will (Michael Esper), trapped with a pregnant girlfriend (Mary Faber). While she manages to deal with the situation, Will stagnates on the sofa. Tunny, played by Stark Sands who made an impact in Journey’s End, joins the military and loses his leg in Iraq. He meets a sympathetic woman called Extraordinary Girl (Christina Sajous). At one point, he takes off to the skies, aided by a wire, with Extraordinary Girl. Was this Mayer being poetic? The three eventually reunite at the suburban 7-11, hardly less disenfranchised, still singing “Nobody cares. Everybody left you. Nobody likes you.” Billie Joe Armstrong wrote most of the lyrics of American Idiot except “Rock and Roll Girlfriend” by Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt’s “Nobody Likes You.” Two suites of songs act as bookends: The first suite, “Jesus of Suburbia,” with music of desperation like "City of the Damned" and "I Don't Care," opens the show. “Homecoming” brings it to an end. In between these suites, songs, sometimes emotional like “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” nudge the slight story along, some. Unfortunately, the characters are more like pencil drawings than detailed oil paintings and all lack development, especially the women. Michael Mayer directs a feverish snapshot of disenfranchisement enhanced by sensory overload of Darrel Maloney’s stabbing video projections and Brian Ronan’s blasting sound design. Christine Jones’s set is eye-catching with a high back wall of videos and posters. Andrea Lauer’s costumes are high school contemporary. The vigorous jump-stamp choreography is by Steven Hoggett and onstage band is theatrical, positioned around the stage and atop the high wall, and Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) has provided strong orchestrations that are the driving force, including a more current Green Day hit, “21 Guns.” A high-octane bonus on this evening was Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt coming up from the audience to sing “American Idiot” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” The audience leapt to its feet, cast members grabbed cameras, as charged as if they hadn’t been performing at full throttle all evening. American Idiot is the place to go for punk rockers but if you are looking for less aural onslaught in your musical theater, you’ll have to keep looking. (Pictured: Stark Sands, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Esper. Photo by Paul Kolnik) Elizabeth Ahlfors Cabaret Scenes April 22, 2010 www.cabaretscenes.org

American Idiot

St. James TheatreNew York, N

St. James Theatre
New York, N