Green Day Make Their American Tommy
4 Out of 5 Stars
The concept of the Rock and Roll Stage Musical is nothing new. "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Hair" made that world safe decades ago. "Grease" and "The Wiz" modernized them slightly, but it wasn't until "Tommy" that the revolution started. The Pete Townsend took his 1969 album to Broadway in 1993, he did something that had not been done before; took an entire album and based the play around it. "Beatlemania" may have been its closest cousin, but that was watching a live evolution of The Beatles had they remained a convert playing live entity. "Beatlemania" is better noted as the grandfather of all Jukebox Musicals, where an artist's catalog becomes fodder for a story either about the band ("Jersey Boys") or some random hodgepodge of a storyline having little or nothing to do with the music ("Mama Mia," "We Will Rock You" or even the snatching of songs from an era that is "Rock of Ages").
"American Idiot" jerks the lineage in a whole new direction. Like The Who's "Tommy," it is based on an album (or two, if you coun't the couple of songs from "21'st Century Breakdown") and the band had a hand in the story. But unlike these other rock musicals, the time from original album to stage was relatively short. Green Day's "American Idiot" was released in 2004, the first version of the play opened in Berkeley in 2009. The songs have changed very little, other than being sung by stage pros that Billie Joe's punky-yowlp. In several instances, this helps the songs.
The original "American Idiot" was such a rampant mix of styles as played by a single rock band, that it was easy to overlook just how melodic and well structured the songs sometimes are. In particular, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "21 Guns" pull ahead of their originals, and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" matches Green Days hit version. Strings and solo pianos add the kind of stagey emotional depth to several of the songs as well. Heck, Billie Joe has even taken the role of St Jimmy for several weeks of the show. You can bet Bono and The Edge aren't going to be onstage for their Spiderman show.
There will be two schools regarding "American Idiot" and the original cast. If the thought of big crunchy guitars of Broadway intrigues you, you'll cheer when the Glee-cast sounding version of the title track kicks in. If you are annoyed the 90's Punk Rock would cross to mainstream stages (whether from the elitist viewpoint of a Punk-Snob or Stage-Snob), this will sound like the second horseman of the apocalypse. Me? I'm all for it. I anxiously await an Alice Cooper musical, Styx's Paradise Theater or Kilroy was Here, and the mind that eventually will dream up The Tupac Vs Biggie show.
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