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From punk-rock opera to Broadway musical

theater review

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 14, 2012|By Jeffrey Gantz

The touring production of American Idiot, adapted from the Green Day album,…

Who’s an American idiot? Certainly not Green Day. In 2004, the trio of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool revived their band’s career with a concept album, a Who-like punk-rock opera that, sporting a heart-shaped hand grenade on the CD cover, took dead aim at George W. Bush’s America. “American Idiot’’ snagged a Grammy for best rock album and a ton of favorable press. In 2009, it became a one-act stage musical, opening in Berkeley, Calif., where Green Day first emerged, and going on to Broadway in 2010, where it ran for over a year. Now the musical’s first national tour has begun, and it’s coming to the Boston Opera House Tuesday for a weeklong run. A film version is also in the works.

The thing is, the original opera concept was pretty vague. The album’s narrator, who doesn’t “want to be an American idiot,’’ identifies himself as “the son of rage and love/ the Jesus of suburbia.’’ After reading “the graffiti in the bathroom stall/ like the Holy Scriptures of a shopping mall,’’ he leaves “Jingletown USA’’ for the big city, where he walks the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams’’ and meets - or, more likely, turns into - “St. Jimmy,’’ a drug user who represents “the needle in the vein of the establishment.’’ At least one woman - “Whatsername’’ - is loved and lost. Jimmy commits suicide, or perhaps our hero simply kills him off. At the end, he’s “back in the barrio,’’ or Jingletown, still dreaming of Whatsername.

So how did Michael Mayer - who in 2007 won a Tony Award for directing the rock-musical version of Frank Wedekind’s 1892 play “Spring Awakening’’ - come up with a stage show?

“I started imagining what it would be like,’’ he says over the phone from his Manhattan apartment. “I listened to ‘American Idiot’ over and over because I loved it so much. I became very interested in the story of the Jesus of Suburbia who goes to the city, who hooks up with this guy, St. Jimmy, and this girl, and he screws his whole life up, and basically has to kill St. Jimmy off in order to move forward and go backwards, back home again. I started kicking around in my head ideas about how to open it up and make it a story of more people. And it was the success of ‘Spring Awakening’ that gave me the courage to pursue it.’’

So, with Armstrong’s approval, Mayer fleshed out the “American Idiot’’ scenario. “I created the characters of Will and Tunny, I gave Whatsername a journey, I made up Heather, I made up the Extraordinary Girl, I made up the Favorite Son,’’ he says.