Ok, here it all is about American Idiot. First, full disclosure: I am a serious Green Day fan. Serious. Both American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown (from which a few songs are included) were perhaps 20-hour per week experiences when they came out. Certain songs still make it onto my daily playlists. I love these albums.
That's probably at least a little bit why I was disappointed with American Idiot, the musical. And that took a lot anyway. I was looking forward to this production. My daughter, who shares a ridiculous level of devotion to plays she likes, like her father, had seen the play four or five times when it was at Berkeley Rep, since she was at law school in San Francisco at the time.She told me to get ready to rock out in my seat for this one.
I even went with her (the world's single biggest John Gallagher, Jr. fan) specifically to see it on Broadway, in one of the last preview performances, to get the full synergy of our shared love. We were both disappointed.
I readily admit it--I was smiling and rocking through and after the first number. Ok, if the whole show were anywhere near as rousing as the opening eponymous anthem, it would have been easier to forgive the abject absence of a cohesive (dare I say coherent?) book. It would have been easier to allow that any moment ripe for full emotional wallop just seemed to wither within the confines of the soaring set. Easier still to allow that the sound, for all the advance heralding of it's ferocity and power, simply dies on the stage (did the producers think the thing was just too loud to get an older audience and tempered it mid-previews??). The power of the introduction of the bass or the full throttle drums are what signal the gear change in a Green Day song--what the heck happened to them here--someone just pulls all their punches!
Hey, I have to give all due props to John Gallagher, Jr. in the lead role. He has the market cornered on young, angry, confused men on the verge of individuation. And I think he is probably the most abundantly talented of our new stars. His lone rendering of the opening verses of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, alone on the stage with his acoustic guitar, evokes the sense of how poignant and heartbreaking things might have been.
And Tony Vincent's St. Jimmy is a welome burst of energy and phrasing. I will likely be at any production that either of these two guys are ever in. And I had a good time at American Idiot. It;s hard not to--after all it is the rock opera of the album--one of the best of all times. Introducing Green Day at the Grammy's in 2002, the year the album won album of the year, Quentin Tarantino declared that American Idiot had broken new ground, "All the songs are good!"
I don't know what happened to Mr Isherwood at the Times. I can only imagine that this may have been his introduction to the glories of Green Day and the incredible artistry of the American Idiot score. Who can blame him? The music is incredible. The show is not.
Ron Gallen
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