The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Beck’s ‘American Idiot’ welcomes new kind of tension
Patrick R. Murphy/PRM Digital Productions New York City in 2010 when there was little unconventional or socially conscious discourse in Broadway musicals. (The previous year’s Tony Award went to “Billy Elliot.”)
“American Idiot” has just made a triumphant, full-frontal assault on the Beck Center for the Arts main stage.
Written by Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and Broadway and Metropolitan Opera veteran Michael Mayer, the musical enriches the album’s thin and scattered narrative with intriguing theatricality. And with the aid of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tom Kit, who wrote the score for the modern opera “Next to Normal,” the album’s angst-ridden guitar riffs, omnipresent and inventive bass lines, and angry, rapid-fire drumming are complemented with more traditional pit instrument orchestrations.
The result is something unique: a musical that bears resemblance to the traditional art form but which comes draped in defiance, sarcasm and youthful exuberance.
It’s so defiant that while fast-paced punk-rock anthems are the featured fare, even the occasional, conventional stripped-down ballads often morph abruptly into hard-rocking numbers or morphine-induced fantasies. This is as jarring as it is brilliant, which is precisely the point.
It is so sarcastic that the story hints at a time-honored happy ending but does not go there. In fact, the lyrics in the opening number warn: “Welcome to a new kind of tension/All across the alien nation/Where everything isn’t meant to be OK.”
It is so youthful it runs the risk of alienating whitehaired theatergoers unless the production possesses the things they immediately recognize and value in musical theater: uncompromising conviction, theatrical virtuosity, and performers with immense talent and stage presence.
Under the supervision of director Scott Spence, musical director/conductor Bryan Bird and choreographer Martín Céspedes, these qualities are fully realized.
Céspedes has conviction covered, for his choreogra- phy is derived from the anxiety radiating from the ensemble of frustrated, passionate and aimless youths (the immensely talented Mike Brandt, Kyle Burnett, Adam James Cooper, Carlos Antonio Cruz, Tekla Gaughan, Trey Gilpin, Codie Higer, Kristen Hoffman, Devon Jordan, Pat Miller, DeVon Settles, Danny Simpson and Carleigh Spence) and emerges – edgy, explosive and organic– from their normal activity. Dance just happens, and, as when Johnny (Dan Folino) and his shortterm girl, Whatsername (Olivia Kaufmann), shoot up in “Last Night on Earth,” it poignantly communicates the emotion of the moment.
Spence masterfully captures the loss of innocence and hope that pervades this play, and his superb team of designers – Trad A Burns (scenic and lighting), Richard B. Ingraham (sound), Jenniver Sparano (costume) and Adam Zeek and Douglas Puskas (projection) – create an ideal space for it to happen. The urban decay on stage consists of a multi-tier framework of steel platforms and stairs that surround the otherwise open performance space. This, in turn, is surrounded by large video screens that display images that establish a sense of time, place and mindset.
Atop one of those platforms is the excellent onstage band (Mike Brandt, Richie Clotz, Benson Anderson, Caitlin Hedge, Alex Figueroa, Dan Hild and Jason Giaco), which rocks the Beck Center so thoroughly that vibrations rattle your ribcage, which is as it should be in a rock musical. Virtuosity? Check.
Same with talent. Folino, with his guitar playing, frontman experience and veteran acting chops, is superb as Johnny despite being a tad too old for the role. He is matched in intensity, vocal ability and stage presence by Kaufmann as the vulnerable Whatsername, Joseph Virgo as the wonderfully hyperactive walking pharmacy St. Jimmy, Riley Ewing and Jonathan Walker White as Johnny’s best friends Will and Tunny, and Annalise Griswold as Heather, Will’s pregnant girlfriend.
In short, “American Idiot” is outstanding. This is Beck doing what it does best — raiding the bar as well as setting it.