AMERICAN IDIOT Jolts the Senses

Music by Green Day; lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong; book by Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer; scenic design, Christine Jones; costume design, Andrea Lauer; lighting design, Kevin Adams; sound design, Brian Ronan; video/projection design, Darrel Maloney; music director, Jared Stein; associate choreographer, Lorin Latarro; associate director, Johanna McKeon; musical supervision, arrangements and orchestrations, Tom Kitt; choreographer, Steven Hoggett; director, Michael Mayer

Cast in order of appearance:
Johnny, Van Hughes; Will, Jake Epstein; Tunny, Scott J. Campbell; Heather, Leslie McDonel; Whatsername, Gabrielle McClinton; St. Jimmy, Joshua Kobak; The Extraordinary Girl, Nicci Claspell; Ensemble: Talia Aaron, Krystina Alabado, Gabriel Antonacci, Larkin Bogan, Jennifer Bowles, Matt DeAngelis, Dan Gleason, Kelvin Moon Loh, Vince Oddo, Okieriete Onaodowan

Performances:
Presented by Broadway In Boston now through January 29, BostonOpera House, 539 Washington Street, Boston. Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 and 8 pm, Sunday at 1 and 6:30 pm. Tickets available through Ticketmaster at 1-800-982-2787 or online at www.BroadwayInBoston.com.

Cross-over punk music group Green Day may not be on this Baby Boomer’s playlist, but its break-out concept album turned Broadway rock opera American Idiot definitely resonates. Like the anti-war and anti-establishment protest music that rallied my generation during the Vietnam War era, American Idiot is this generation’s passionate outcry against post 9/11 politics marked by paranoia, greed, nationalism, hypocrisy, and an ever increasing sociological gap between those in power and everyone else.

American Idiot – through Green Day’s hard-driving music, lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s smart, edgy lyrics, and director Michael Mayer’s evocative and razor-sharp staging – charts the alienation and disillusionment of three apathetic twenty-something friends who decide to go their separate ways in search of meaning and fulfillment. Johnny (Van Hughes) sets off for the bright lights of the big city, backpack and guitar in hand. Tunny (Scott J. Campbell) is seduced by a poster boy recruiter and enlists in the Army. He is immediately deployed to Iraq. Will (Jake Epstein) stays behind to “do the right thing” when he discovers that his girlfriend Heather (Leslie McDonel) is pregnant.

While none of the characters are fleshed out in much detail – Will does little more than watch TV and drink beer – they somehow manage to evoke considerable empathy as their dreams are dashed either at their own hand or the hands of others. The small-town Johnny falls prey to an evangelical pusher named St. Jimmy (Joshua Kobak) and a good-time girl he dubs Whatsername (Gabrielle McClinton) because his drug-addled brain has erased almost all memory of her. The good soldier Tunny is seriously wounded in the war, and the self-absorbed Will loses his girlfriend and child to another more attentive – and responsible – lover. Severely battered and deeply bruised, they all nonetheless manage to find the strength to seek redemption and start anew. They shift from self-indulgently blaming the world for their sorrows to realizing that change starts right at home.

Green Day infuses a pulsating optimism and self-aware irony into American Idiot’s angry core. The title song and opening number is a rollicking anthem and call to arms against the media and the way in which it desensitizes us to the very barrage of images it hurls at us 24/7. Yet the very next number, “Jesus of Suburbia,” includes a wry sequence called “I Don’t Care” which is proof positive that the protestors have fallen victim to the very anesthetic they decry.

This intelligent mix of protest and self-scrutiny elevates Green Day’s American Idiot to thoughtful musical drama and lends itself to potent visual staging. “Favorite Son” has a forever smiling Olympic swimmer and Man of the Year morph from posing for magazine covers in his BVDs to donning an Army sergeant’s uniform, marching almost goose-step with his admirers-turned-recruits, leading them happily off to war. “Give Me Novacaine,” an aching tableau of three souls lost in worlds they never envisioned, has Johnny, Tunny and Will singing of their varying levels of pain and need for escape. Johnny becomes so enmeshed in his addictions to heroin and sex that the rubber bands he uses to tie off his veins literally become the ropes that tie him to Whatshername while they simultaneously shoot up and make love. In contrast, Tunny and his fellow soldiers frantically engage in calisthenics that transform from violent push-ups to dodging bullets in the field. Steven Hoggett’s choreography here is stunning, with the members of the male ensemble literally hurling themselves into the air from the ground and spinning as if tossed by exploding mortar shells. Of course, the desperation and danger of Johnny and Tunny’s situations make Will’s couch potato melancholy seem trivial by comparison. Yet his need to numb his disappointments in a longneck is just as real to him as are those of his buddies who left him behind at home.

One of the major achievements in Green Day’s relentlessly emotional score is that there are no judgments about whose life is more or less worthwhile. Nowhere is this open-mindedness more apparent in American Idiot than in its treatment of Tunny’s life as a soldier. Rather than demonize the solider, which unfortunately occurred all too often by protestors during the Vietnam War, Green Day demonizes the circumstances that turn soldiers into collateral damage. The most haunting and heart-breaking sequence in American Idiot, in fact, occurs in the Army hospital where Tunny lies unconscious, teetering on the borderline between death and recovery. In his near-death fugue state, he conjures an Iraqi angel (Nicci Claspell) who first hovers above his bed, then raises him in romantic flight as they do an aerial pas de deux to “Extraordinary Girl.” Such beauty is yet another example of the complexity and honesty in Green Day’s – and Michael Mayer’s – ultimately gripping work.

Performances across the board are simply outstanding. Hughes, Epstein, Campbell, McDonel, McClinton and Kobak all have strong, clear voices that serve both the rock and Broadway worlds very well. As actors they are passionate, committed, and quite sympathetic. The energy of the entire ensemble is through the roof, yet they are able to tone it down and give full play to the quieter ballads when necessary, as well. Johnny’s tender solo with guitar, “When It’s Time,” is a touching example.

Hoggett’s aforementioned choreography is downright breathtaking. He pays homage to the punk rock idiom with head-banging, foot-stomping repetition, yet he also inserts inventive and highly interpretive sequences like the soldiers’ numbers and a particularly passionate and almost violent Apache-like ballet between Will and Heather. The Tony Award-winning design team, too, brings a vibrant layer of expression and immediacy to the production. Christine Jones’ electrifying wall of Big Brother television screens and garage band junk assault the audience with political messages and cultural images – and subtle cries for help scrawled like graffiti amidst the clutter. Kevin Adams’ lighting and Darrel Maloney’s video projections are an intoxicating mix of anger, hope, and confusion that alternately incite and soothe.

The sound mix for American Idiot is so balanced, and the vocal performances by the cast so clear, that even aging Baby Boomers should have no trouble appreciating the quietly beating human heart beneath the loudly beating protest of the drums.

"American Idiot" has only five more performances in Boston, through Sunday, January 29. A limited number of same-day lottery seats, located in the front two rows of the orchestra, are available for each show. Persons interested in rushing should arrive at the Boston Opera House Box Office 2-1/2 hours prior to curtain to enter the lottery. Names will be then drawn at random 30 minutes later. Lottery tickets are $28, cash only, limit two tickets per person.

PHOTOS by Doug Hamilton: Scott J. Campbell as Tunny, Van Hughes as Johnny and Jake Esptein as Will; Van Hughes, Joshua Kobak as St. Jimmy, and the company; Scott J. Campbell; Scott J. Campbell and Nicci Claspell as Extraordinary Girl; Van Hughes

 

 

 

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