The Broadway musical American Idiot is less a musical than a musical revue, featuring songs from Green Day’s 2004 rock opera American Idiot strung together with the most tenuous of connective tissue. The show begins by sending up of a trio self-romanticizing suburban misfits, then proceeds to dismantle their illusions, hypocrisy, and self-deceptions. With song!
The plot follows three punk rockers in a generic American suburb, chafing equally at the military industrial complex and their shitty stepdads. Struggling to find their place in the world, one joins the military, one picks up a drug addiction, and one stays home with his pregnant ball-and-chain. It’s all very angsty and there’s a lot of pantomimed drug use. Billie Joe’s hair is heavily referenced.
For most teenagers, punk rock is all about dressing up in silly costumes and seeking out music that helps them channel their hormones. So translating its aesthetic to a musical actually makes a ton of sense, if you’re able to let go of the notion that punk actually means anything. Unfortunately, American Idiot lugs along some of the baggage that punk scenes historically struggled with: Namely, it treats its women like shit. The three protagonists are white dudes; the peripheral female characters are girlfriends, mothers, nurses, dutifully midwifing this hero’s journey along. (Let’s make a rock opera out of Reject All American! I would go to that.)
But it’s probably a mistake to poke too deeply at the story or the social commentary here—this is a big-budget touring musical, which means spectacle is the order of the day. And I don’t know about you, but the reason I go to musicals is to see two drama kids pretending to be junkies do an interpretive dance number with length of rubber tube. (See also: Heroin pusher flinging sinister handfuls of glitter around the stage.) It’s all very silly and fun, if not as Srs Bsnss as it might like us to believe. There are some tremendous voices among the ensemble, and plenty of over-the-top set pieces that you’ll like if you like over-the-top musical set pieces. (Some of the choreography is truly awful, particularly a two handed start-the-lawnmower move that is presumably intended to evoke some sort of raw punk-rock self expression, but… doesn’t.) At the end, the entire ensemble comes out holding acoustic guitars to sing “Time of Your LIfe” to the audience. It’s no Rent, but it’s an entertaining spectacle that doesn’t do anything to Green Day’s legacy that Billie Joe didn’t do himself.
The show’s in Portland through Sunday; tickets here.
“It’s no Rent” reads like a ringing endorsement to me!
You forgot to mention that the entire cast encored with a performance of “Time of Your Life”.
Aaaaaaagh! Ghastly!
Another blissfully ignorant review from the pork staff at the mercury. It sounds like the writer just read the Wikipedia article on the musical, rather than actually seeing it.
“For most teenagers, punk rock is all about dressing up in silly costumes and seeking out music that helps them channel their hormones.”- This sounds like some preppy hipster highschool bully talk- Fuck you
did i seriously just get called a “preppy”? ohh man that insult sure takes me back to 1997.
@Michelle I DID NOT FORGET TO MENTION IT! Though perhaps I should’ve put it in bold blinky text. Because that part was hilarious.
“preppy hipster highschool bully”
You know, I don’t often drink early in the morning but when I do, I like to string together pejoratives that make no sense.
Just a warning for older (and younger) viewers: I saw it last night, and also saw maybe 12-15 couples in front of me walk out. It’s not for the sensitive blue-haired viewer, to be sure. I also felt bad for our friends who brought their 14 year-old son. The word ‘fuck’ is sung innumerable times, and there is simulated sex and drug use. In terms of content, Rent is lily-white by comparison.
I thought it was good though, and it will certainly appeal to people who came of age in the 90s.