As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
American Idiot The Musical | QPAC | Sunday February 26th
In 2004 at the intersection of post-2011 suburban America and the (extremely late, albeit welcomed) realisation the American Dream was all sold out of fairytales and happy endings, American Idiot made Green Day important again.
It’s their magnum opus: relevant to an entire new generation of contemporary punks dealt a desolate future, made more poignant when the stupidity of the nation was confirmed (again) with the re-election of ol’ George Dubya the second.
It was a helluva record, man. And as much as I’d love to sit around shooting shit about one of those epic, sprawling punk-rock-opera type records that only came around once every while in a generation (before American Idiot dropped), I got to get down to business.
Well, American Idiot is back. And this time suited to the format to the style it was semi-designed for: musical theatre.
I’m used to reviewing shows in dive bars where a door girl will write my name and publication on a list in biro—maybe a Sharpie. I’d only been to one musical prior to this. But walking in, squeezing between patrons to get to my seat—most of ‘em looking well under 50 and trying not to spill booze on their band shirts or shiny new programs—I knew this wasn’t a normal musical.
Minus a few corny dance moves American Idiot is literally sex, drugs and rock and roll. Think Grease, but, you know, good.
For one, there was a whole lotta action, baby. Straight from the get-go it’s an emotional, electrifying display of raw angst, anger and vulnerability. American Idiot blasts through the theatre, presenting the characters (saturated with media and fed up with the State of the Union, and vital to making American Idiot such an agonising and poignant narrative of contemporary punk life) against an industrial set and forlorn backdrop of decaying political rhetoric and turmoil. It’s got the feel of a rock show: a leather jacket ripped-jeans grunge-fest drenched with apathy; middle fingers flying around without any thought of apology or care for tenured theatre goers expecting good, clean fun.
Anyone buying a ticket expecting a straight up rendition of American Idiot—be warned. That’s not what you’ll get; though you’ll still walk away with more than you bargained for. Apart from a changed track listing and the use of songs from American Idiot’s successor, 21st Century Breakdown, the plot and visual elements is what really separates the musical from the record.
Accentuating the existing dynamite story of Jesus of Suburbia by distributing it among Johnny (Ben Bennet), Will (Alex Jeans) and Tunny (Cameron MacDonald)—three jaded youths from Jingletown, USA—the stage adaptation creates three interweaving and connected stories of hope, despair and inevitable demise.
Johnny, the main-character-Billie-Joe archetype of the story, is essentially Jesus of Suburbia. His audience-announced diary entries-slash-postcards home serves as a timeline in-and-amongst the weaving narrative, told through high-octane performances.
The show throbs with energy, sorrow and a display of raw passion and sentiment that you’d be hard pressed to see at an actual punk rock show—that’s why these people are performers, and don’t they do a damn convincing job.
Tunny can’t adjust to the grim reality of urban life and, seduced by media and numbed to excitement, joins the army and is deployed to war zone; Johnny, frustrated and lacking ambition, manifests an alter ego (St. Jimmy) and injects heroin and chases the attention of a girl in a window (Whatshername); Will just sits on his couch in suburbia drinking beer and smoking dope and his girlfriend’s pregnancy progresses, begging for a way out.
That’s pretty much the gist of it; just strap in and hang on for a ride down a wormhole of rock and roll idealism. There’s not much dialogue, to be fair it ain’t much needed. The songs do the work; a testament to the relevancy of the American Idiot narrative and it’s commentary calling bullshit political agendas—especially now, if ever before.
Theatre is a bit of blanket term for a production like this: it’s more like a veracious stadium rock circus took up a three-week residency in dingy dive bar back alley across the road from a 7/11. It’s Bollywood on fast-forward, audio-visual and puck as fuck. Minus a few corny dance moves American Idiot is literally sex, drugs and rock and roll. Think Grease, but, you know, good.
Although Chris Cheney played enigmatic alter ego St. Jimmy, the watertight execution of the performance was held down by Jeans, Bennet and MacDonald as Will, Johnny and Tunny. Don’t get me wrong; Cheney oozed swag and put out a pulsating performance as St. Jimmy, the role is just so minor in comparison to the arching narrative of the musical. A notable mention has got to go to Phoebe Panaretos as Whatshername, singing to Johnny with a mesmerising and booming voice that vibrates the entire theatre, “You’re not the Jesus of Suburbia / The St. Jimmy is a figment of / Your father’s rage and your mother’s love / Made me the idiot America” in the best rendition of Letterbomb I’ve seen since Green Day played it at Brisbane Entertainment Centre in 2005.
It’s a very well cast and professional production. You can almost believe the performers, especially the main characters, are probably just going to go home, smoke weed, drink beer, masturbate into oblivion and fuck around tuning a bass guitar in a basement—it’s what make the musical so much more vivid than the record; it’s apathy is more familiar and it’s right there, seen in plain sight.
As corny as it is (and let it be noted that is extremely fucking corny), the show finishes with Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), which is weird, ‘cause it’s the only song included in the musical that was written before American Idiot and has no real business being in the show. But, you get what you pay for, and if people have paid for an old fashioned sing along to Green Day’s greatest hit, then that’s what they’re going to get. It doesn’t take anything away from the performance though, it just means it doesn’t finish on as grim a note as it could have, if we (read: the characters) didn’t have the advantage of hindsight.
Apart from that, if you’re at the age where you’re still spinning American Idiot on Discman and want to get involved with the energy at punk rock shows but your legs get sore from standing and moshing all night, this pretty much tailor made for your needs. Also, kids—this would be a great way to convince your parents to let you go to a punk rock show, or better yet, you can convince them that you’re going to a culturally-enriching “musical”.
