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Green Day’s American Idiot makes brief stop at the Hippodrome

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More than 30 years after Sid Vicious snarled “My Way,” punk is busting out all over once again. There is a punk couture show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spikes adorn clothes and bags and even the likes of Miley Cyrus are sporting Mohawk ‘dos.
All this would probably make Poly Styrene turn over in her grave and who knows what the punk pioneer would make of a Broadway musical dedicated to the discordant discontent of the movement. But there we have it, the 2010 Tony Award-winning musical American Idiot, featuring the music of Green Day and lyrics by Bay Area pop-punk protégé Billie Joe Armstrong.
Based on the 2004 concept album of the same name, American Idiot deals with youthful angst and antsiness as three friends struggle to break out of suburban straitlaces and find their way in a post 9/11, warmongering world that makes no sense. For the musical, director Michael Mayer co-wrote the book with Mr. Armstrong, having had some experience with adolescent urges and destructiveness in the musical Spring Awakening. 
Members of the touring company of Green Day's American Idiot
Members of the touring company of Green Day’s American Idiot

The show is an entirely sung-through crazy quilt of Green Day songs (the musical also includes music from the band’s “21st Century Breakdown”) and like, Mamma Mia!, any story is loosely fitted around the narrative of the songs. The result is a rather derivative coming of age story between the three young men where the audience is asked to fill in way too many blanks.

Staged in a kinetic, explosive music video style with a grungy, multi-level set that has you mesmerized by a wall of flat TVs blaring various iconic images and messages, the production elements are meant to distract or numb you from its lack of substantive character development or story.  American Idiot is a head-banging blast—so long as you don’t think about it. Surrender to the thrashing swirl of the choreography, the exceptional singing and Green Day’s propulsive, ecstatic music and you will be fine.
The women of the touring company of Green Day's American Idiot
The women of the touring company of Green Day’s American Idiot

Just don’t think about the superficial treatment of race—having a rainbow tribe of young people writhing on stage is not the same as giving them interesting or authentic characters to play. Or perhaps more egregious, gender. The women in this musical are either constantly flashing their drawers, one-dimensional sex vixens, objects of fantasy or so incidental to the action you wonder why the creators even bothered in the first place. For heaven’s sake, they don’t give two of the main characters proper names. To be fair, the men spend quite a lot of time in their skivvies as well.

It’s better just to concentrate on the three heroes—white young men who don’t seem to have to work and who have some invisible means of financial support so they can sit around and drink beer and do drugs and be all emo and ironic. OK, you are slackers but sensitive slackers because, like, you wear eyeliner and mope a lot. Got it, dude.
Johnny (Alex Nee, possessing a rock star voice and the charisma to go with it) plays guitar and busts out of his small town for an unnamed big city with his pal Tunny (an impassioned Dustin Harris Smith). Johnny finds himself pulled between the twin allures of indie girl Whatshername (Alyssa DiPalma, exuding punk princess swagger) and the drugs of St. Jimmy (the gender-blending Trent Saunders).
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Recommended
Green Day’s American Idiot
Closes May 12, 2013
Hippodrome Theatre
The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center
12 North Eutaw Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
1 hour, 30 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $35- $120
Thursday thru Sunday
Details and Tickets or call 410.547.SEAT
[/wpcol_1quarter]Tunny never adjusts to the city and runs off to join the military, which, as you might predict, doesn’t go well. However, he does have an excellent pain medication dream from his hospital bed, where he is visited by Extraordinary Girl (the lissome Jenna Rubaii) and the two fly through the air in an aerial, Middle Eastern dance-style pas de deux that possesses a surreal magic.
The third friend, Will (a mad and mournful Casey O’Farrell) is stuck at home with a pregnant girlfriend Heather (the dynamic Kennedy Caughell) and he sinks into a morass of TV viewing, drinking and smoking weed.
The fate of this disaffected triumvirate is told through such beloved Green Day songs as “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “21 Guns,” “Jesus of Suburbia” and the humble loveliness of “Wake Me Up When September Ends.”
American Idiot is engineered to be an adrenaline rush and it succeeds in carrying you on a tidal wave of nameless emotion and hyperactive fury. One twentysomething theatergoer on opening night said it best: “Dude, that was awesome. It was just like middle school.”
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Green Day’s American Idiot . Music by Green Day .lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong . book by Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer . Directed by Michael Mayer . Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard

[wpcol_1fifth id=”” class=”” style=””]idiot2[/wpcol_1fifth] [wpcol_4fifth_end id=”” class=”” style=””]Other reviews

 Tim Smith . Baltimore Sun
Amanda Gunther . DCMetroTheaterArts[/wpcol_4fifth_end]

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