Whiter Than Your iPod.

“American Idiot” the Musical

“American Idiot” is an interesting idea for a show, but it still needs a lot of tweaking. It’s like people got in a room and went, “I love this Green Day album. Let’s make a musical out of it.” (Which, you know, may not be too far from the truth.)

First, they want to set a tone of irreverence from the very moment you walk in. Sharpies and chalk line the entrance to the theatre for you to be a total bad ass and doodle all over the wall. Yes, the wall. Unless the cast got really, really ambitious, the show’s had less than six days of previews and there was almost no bare wall space. I went balls-to-the-wall for the molding. Clearly.

I’ve seen “Billy Elliot” 12 times. I’m trained like a soldier to sit through three hours of British boy jazz hands. So when I read that there was no intermission (and realized that I had “broken the seal” during happy hour), I was panicking. I was smack-dab in the middle of the third row. I could catch the actors’ spit into a Dixie cup if I tried, but I would also have to get past four other people, including three kids under the age of eight and their mom.

Which brings me to the thing you really should not do at this show: bring your kids. Seriously, do not bring your lunch box-toting children here. Have your emo teens go for sure, but not them. There is drug paraphernalia used as props in choreography. Sex is simulated center stage throughout most of a song in a way that isn’t the usual we-are-two-actors-molesting-each-other-under-a-large-sheet-for-a-count-of-eight, hee-hee type. Most of the cast is in their underwear or having someone touch them in their bathing suit area at some point during the performance. (They also all employee a great waxist. There’s a lot you can see from the third row.) Oh, and there’s a fine appreciation of my favorite expletives.

Throughout all this, you have a great cast of performers and musicians, and one of the best (if not the best) set and lighting designs I’ve ever seen on a Broadway stage, helping you forget that you can’t remember any of the character’s names (most are listed as “ensemble;” one is “Whatsername”) and you don’t know their backstory. It’s like being at an amazing rock concert with just as little dialogue. It touches on so little on what should be so much of the overall story they’re trying to tell.

This show needs to fill out its character sheet and find some context. You can tell by the actors’ performances that they know exactly who they are. They know their characters middle names, where they went to school, who first broke their heart and who offered them their first cigarette. But, if all we see is song after song after song with no way to allow those melodies to resonate, what’s the difference between musical theatre and the greatest concert you’ve ever seen?

Check it out and scrawl on the wall.