the dope report

Iconoclastic director Michael Mayer takes a big hit and extends the high

By David Downs

Shooting heroin, simulated coitus, rampant bong tokes – finally, someone’s made a decent musical.

Green Day’s punk rock opera ‘American Idiot’ – the stage adaptation of the platinum-selling album – is not as good as Green Day live. (That shit’s bananas.) But it’s a damn fine ninety minutes of masterful musical theater, especially the choreography and wrenching new takes on hit tracks like “Give Me Novacaine”.

Wednesday September 16 was the star-studded press night premiere of the opera, which runs September 4 through October 11 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and many were rooting for it to suck. Green Day has always been a fit-inducing paradox of pop and punk – a symbol of rebellion on the most notorious mainstream label in the history of recorded music, Warner. They are the last of the great rock bands built by a now-defunct star system, and Green Day being not “punk” enough still rankles purists.

And yet, what could be more paradoxical than adapting their mainstream opus on anomie, drug use and living in the age of George W. Bush to an artistic context that gave us The Lion King, Legally Blonde the Musical and goddammit, High School Musical? Iconoclastic director Michael Mayer is deviant for even attempting the crossover, and the Tony Award-winner completely pulls it off. After its initial run at the Rep, American Idiot will likely go on to entertain millions of teenagers and hip oldsters on Broadway and around the world. Sneer all you like, but here’s why:

The musical takes the album American Idiot and stretches it out over ninety minutes, adding in songs from new album 21st Century Breakdown, as well as snippets of dialog written by Green Day vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, spoken as letters home from John Gallagher, Jr. who plays Johnny. The entire opera is played live by a tight, pitch perfect nine-piece band.

The plot of the album and hence the opera is, of course, pure pablum: Johnny and friends get fed up with the burbs, move to the city, fuck around and find themselves through smack, Iraq and fatherhood, then come home. (Was Tommy or The Wall really deeper?) Like the stage itself, the plot is shallow yet tall, anthemic instead of specific and it mimics the strength and weaknesses of the album itself, with its now-played-out intro “American Idiot”, a very, very strong middle including “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Give Me Novacaine”, and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and a somewhat frayed ending that struggles to wrap it up.

Director Michael Mayer’s last project, the Tony Award winning adaptation of 19th century German puberty play Spring Awakening – with music by Duncan Shiek – proved he had the cajones to approach a Green Day piece. I mean, the band is named after their teenage slang term for getting high on cannabis all day, hence “Green Day”. From the first scene, Will (Michael Esper), Johnny and Tunny (Matt Caplan) are drinking Dead Guy Ale fished from plastic coolers and chain smoking. Repeated bong tokes, simulated coitus, and burly scene of heroin injection transforms what could’ve been an insipid G-rated commercial ploy into an unflinching snapshot of a generation in a tailspin. (At one point someone even smokes crack out of a glass pipe. Damn! Is that PG-13? Rated R?)

The stage designed by Christine Jones was a masterpiece: fifty feet tall and wheat-pasted like a Berkeley warehouse with Dead Kennedeys posters and Shepard Fairey’s OBEY iconography. At least two dozen flat screen televisions and lights interacted with the characters below, emphasizing themes and emotions. Thank costumer Andrea Lauer and her deft team: the clothing nailed late ‘90s suburban scrub as well as classic, Berkeley black bloc aesthetic. They looked so scrungy, I wanted to kick some of them afterward for blocking the entrance to Downtown Berkeley BART, especially Tony Vincent as Johnny’s dark side St. Jimmy.

Vincent easily had the best voice and presence in the show. He’s absolutely magnetic as a Marilyn Manson-esque doppelganger – all nihilism and sneer. Baby mama Libby Winters also has an incredible set of pipes on her and a presence that makes her stand out among the 21-person cast.

Choreographer Steven Hoggett absolutely smashes it, incorporating some of the most intricate and advanced blocking in theater with requisite head-banging and pogoing and utterly shocking modern dance, like in “Give Me Novacaine” where the troupe chillingly mimics being blown to bits in slow motion in Iraq. The scene sent me right back to The Hurt Locker and hairs stood on end as the cannons fired. Orchestrator Tom Kitt deserves equal praise for breaking down ... Idiot and reassembling it, especially the acoustic version of “Wake Me Up When September Ends” which simmers instead of explodes.

Some in attendance said Mayer’s prior work Spring Awakening was better. Others questioned its inherent message or lack therein, which begs the question – “Must art have a cogent, positive message?” (I mean, is this socialist Russia?) Nope. American Idiot was perfectly messy like hipster bedhead and entertaining from the curtain’s rise. The hater in me sneared at first, ‘Wow, this is going to be even gayer than the album,’ but of course, the album is not ghey, it’s actually very good, and by the end, I was giving Mayer’s team the same standing ovation that the actual band Green Day was, seated just a few rows over from me in the intimate hall.

Play on, players. [Read Billie Joe Armstrong’s take on American Idiot]