Green Day and The Cast of 'American Idiot'

American Idiot is a one-act, through-sung, stage musical. The show is an adaption of rock band Green Day's concept album of the same name. Additional Green Day songs were interpolated from other sources, including 21st Century Breakdown. The book is by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and director Michael Mayer. The lyrics are by Armstrong, and the music is written by Armstrong and band mates Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool .
The story, expanded from that of the concept album, centers on Johnny, a disaffected youth who flees stifling suburbia and his parents' restrictions to look for meaning in his life, and to try out the freedom and excitement of the city. One of his friends stays home to work out his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend. Another friend serves in Iraq. Johnny finds a part of himself that he grows to dislike, has a relationship and experiences lost love.
After a run at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2009, the show moved to Broadway, beginning previews at the St. James Theatre on March 24, 2010 and officially opened on April 20, 2010. Green Day does not appear in the production, but the show has an onstage band.
The show opened to mixed to positive reviews from critics, but got an all-important rave from The New York Times. American Idiot received three Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical.
Background
Green Day released the concept album American Idiot in 2004. According to lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, the album was deliberately created with a through narrative and that some of their inspiration was from sources in the musical theater repertoire like The Rocky Horror Show and West Side Story. Armstrong also said the band intended "that it would be staged or we'd create a film or something... we were thinking in terms that it kind of felt like scoring a movie." Director Michael Mayer heard the album and expressed an interest in adapting it for the stage. When he approached the band about a collaboration, they agreed to work with him. The band also gave Mayer wide latitude for his adaptation after seeing the director's earlier work with Spring Awakening.
Berkeley tryout
The musical premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Previews began on September 4, 2009 and the official opening was on September 15, 2009. After becoming the top-grossing show in Berkeley Rep history, the producers extended the limited run twice to November 15, 2009. The cast included John Gallagher Jr. as Johnny, Matt Caplan as Tunny, Mary Faber as Heather, and Tony Vincent as St. Jimmy .
Broadway
The musical transferred to Broadway at the St. James Theatre with previews beginning on March 24, 2010 and officially opened on April 20, 2010. The cast performed at the Grammy Awards on January 31, 2010 with Green Day. The original Broadway cast includes John Gallagher Jr. as Johnny, Michael Esper as Will, Stark Sands as Tunny, Tony Vincent as St. Jimmy , Rebecca Naomi Jones as Whatsername, Mary Faber as Heather, and Christina Sajous as the Extraordinary Girl.
Tom Kitt is the music supervisor and orchestrator for both the Berkeley and Broadway productions. The lead producers for the show are Ira Pittelman and Tom Hulce. The creative team for the show is largely the same as for the musical adaptation of Spring Awakening: Michael Mayer, director, Christine Jones, scenic designer, and Kevin Adams, lighting designer. Andrea Lauer is the costume designer.
Plot
The musical opens on Johnny, Will and Tunny: three twenty-something friends unhappily living in suburbia (identified as Jingletown, USA) and saturated with TV ("American Idiot"). The three feel by their mundane lives ("Jesus of Suburbia") and decide to escape. Johnny (aka Jesus of Suburbia) borrows money from his mother and buys bus tickets to the city for himself and his friends. Will, however, learns that his girlfriend Heather is pregnant and must stay with her. Johnny and Tunny depart for the city with a group of other jaded youths ("Holiday").
While Johnny wanders the city and pines for a woman he sees in an apartment window ("Boulevard of Broken Dreams"), Tunny finds it hard to adjust to urban life and is seduced by a television ad for the army ("Favorite Son"). Tunny realizes that his generation has been so numbed and apathetic that nothing, not even the bright lights of the city, will excite him ("Are We the Waiting"). He enlists in the army.
Frustrated by his friend's departure and his inability to find girls or fun, Johnny comes into contact with a charismatic, androgynous drug dealer who calls himself St. Jimmy, and Johnny shoots heroin for the first time with Jimmy at his side ("St. Jimmy"). Meanwhile, back home, Will sits on the couch as his girlfriend's pregnancy progresses. Will drinks beer and begs for a release ("Give Me Novacaine"). Tunny is deployed to a war zone, presumably Iraq, and is soon shot and wounded.
Johnny finds that St. Jimmy has given him everything he's ever wanted—girls and fun—and spends the night with the girl he saw in the window, whom he calls "Whatsername" ("Last of the American Girls"/"She's a Rebel"). Johnny and Whatsername go to a club and shoot drugs together before having sex ("Last Night on Earth").
Will has difficulty accepting the idea of fatherhood, and Heather becomes increasingly irritated with his immaturity. Despite his entreaties to stay, she eventually leaves him, taking their baby with her ("Too Much, Too Soon"). Will laments that everyone he cared for abandoning him. Around the same time, lying in a bed in an army hospital ("Before the Lobotomy"), Tunny hallucinates that he and his nurse engage in a balletic aerial dance ("Extraordinary Girl"). He falls in love with her ("Before the Lobotomy (Reprise)").
Jimmy reappears but Johnny ignores him, watching Whatsername sleep. Johnny muses on their relationship ("When It's Time"). The temptation of drugs, however, is too great; Jimmy causes Johnny to become increasingly erratic, and he eventually threatens Whatsername (and then himself) with a knife ("Know Your Enemy"). Whatsername attempts to calm him down while the Extraordinary Girl dresses Tunny's wounds and Will sits on the couch, once again alone ("21 Guns"). Frightened and fed up, Whatsername reveals to Johnny that "the St. Jimmy is a figment of [his] father's rage and [his] mother's love" ("Letterbomb"). She leaves him.
Johnny is forced to admit that his life has amounted to nothing ("Wake Me Up When September Ends"). St. Jimmy appears and makes one last attempt to get Johnny's attention, but that part of Johnny has died; Jimmy commits suicide. Johnny cleans up and gets a desk job but soon realizes that he can find no place for him in the city. He returns to his hometown and reunites with Tunny—who has returned as an amputee with the Extraordinary Girl—and Will—who has been reunited with his baby ("Homecoming"). One year later, Johnny laments that he lost the love of his life ("Whatsername").
Reception
Reviews for the Berkeley Rep production were mixed. Charles McNulty of latimes.com called the show "Kinetically entertaining in a way that intentionally reflects the shallow, media-saturated culture the album rails against". Karen D'Souza of MercuryNews.com called the production "a thrashing collage of songs fused together with hypnotic movement and eye-popping visuals" and thought the show "as compelling as it is abstract [and] channels the grungy spirit of punk while also plucking at the heartstrings." However, Jim Harrington of the Oakland Tribune compared the show unfavorably to the original album, writing: "[what] once a was fine Gouda, has been prepackaged as Velveeta", and continued sarcastically, "In other words, it should do big business on Broadway." Charles Isherwood of the New York Times commented that the show contained "characters who lack much in the way of emotional depth or specificity, and plotlines that are simple to the point of crudity" but also felt that "the show possesses a stimulating energy and a vision of wasted youth that holds us in its grip."
Isherwood's review for the Broadway production was enthusiastic. He called the show "a pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions ... only to transcend them through the power of its music and the artistry of its execution, the show is as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I’ve seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons past." Jed Gottleib of the Boston Herald enjoyed the premise of the show but found that "the music and message suffer in a setting where the audience is politely, soberly seated". Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press found the show to be "visually striking [and] musically adventurous", but noted that "the show has the barest wisp of a story and minimal character development". Paul Kolnik in USA Today enjoyed the contradiction that Green Day's "massively popular, starkly disenchanted album ... would be the feel-good musical of the season". Time magazine's Richard Zoglin opined that the score "is as pure a specimen of contemporary punk rock as Broadway has yet encountered [yet] there's enough variety. ... Where the show fall short is as a fully developed narrative." He concluded that "American Idiot, despite its earnest huffing and puffing, remains little more than an annotated rock concert. ... Still, [it] deserves at least two cheers – for its irresistible musical energy and for opening fresh vistas for that odd couple, rock and Broadway." Peter Travers from Rolling Stone, in his review of American Idiot, wrote "Though American Idiot carries echoes of such rock musicals as Tommy, Hair, Rent and Spring Awakening, it cuts its own path to the heart. You won’t know what hit you. American Idiot knows no limits — it's a global knockout."