But more often the show delivers a raw, visceral excitement and an emotional wallop, fusing a host of scorching musical performances with convulsive choreography and arresting video projections that more than compensate for a simplistic story line (the show is almost entirely through-sung).
Under the direction of Michael Mayer (“Spring Awakening’’), who co-wrote the book with Armstrong, “American Idiot’’ comes to jolting life right from the opening number, the title tune, an angry anthem sung by the entire ensemble with a defiant refrain that more or less spells out the stance and the goals of the young and restless protagonists: “Don’t want to be an American idiot.’’
Van Hughes, reprising the role he played on Broadway, portrays Johnny, a young man chafing at life in the sterile suburbs, summed up in “Jesus of Suburbia’’: “I’m the son of rage and love / The Jesus of Suburbia / From the bible of none of the above / On a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin / No one ever died for my sins in hell / As far as I can tell / At least the ones I got away with.’’
With his friend, Tunny (Scott J. Campbell), he hits the road in search of adventure while another friend, Will (Jake Epstein), unhappily stays home with his pregnant girlfriend, Heather (Leslie McDonel).
Arriving in an unnamed city, Johnny enters into a relationship with a young woman (played by Gabrielle McClinton), but he falls under the Mephistophelean sway of St. Jimmy (Joshua Kobak), a drug dealer. Johnny’s heroin habit proves incompatible with romance.
Tunny, meanwhile, having entered the military, is sent to a war zone.
He is wounded, and in “Extraordinary Girl,’’ a spellbinding, hallucinatory sequence, Tunny and his nurse (Nicci Claspell) engage in an aerial ballet.
