Broadway Blog - AMERICAN IDIOT Review Roundup

American Idiot follows the exhilarating journey of a new generation of young Americans as they struggle to find meaning in a post 9/11 world, borne along by Green Day's electrifying score. This high-octane show includes every song from the acclaimed album American Idiot, as well as several songs from the band's Grammy-nominated new release, 21st Century Breakdown.

Green Day won two Grammy Awards for the groundbreaking rock opera American Idiot, which sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Now Billie Joe Armstrong and the band collaborate with one of the theatre's most acclaimed creative teams, led by the Tony Award-winning director of Spring Awakening, Michael Mayer, two-time Tony Award-winning composer and orchestrator Tom Kitt, and Olivier Award-winning choreographer Steven Hoggett, to bring this explosive, iconic album to the stage.

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: "But the emotion charge that the show generates is as memorable as the music. “American Idiot” jolts you right back to the dizzying roller coaster of young adulthood, that turbulent time when ecstasy and misery almost seem interchangeable states, flip sides of the coin of exaltation. It captures with a piercing intensity that moment in life when everything seems possible, and nothing seems worth doing, or maybe it’s the other way around."

Elysa Gardner, USA Today: "Anyone who had hoped that Green Day would finally bring punk-rock nihilism to Broadway is about to be sorely disappointed. Few could have predicted that American Idiot (***½ out of four), the new adaptation of the band's massively popular, starkly disenchanted album of the same name, would be the feel-good musical of the season."

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly: "Still, punk nihilism and showbiz spirit-fingers are uneasy bedfellows. And at times, Idiot’s efforts to meld the two are jarring. In that sense, Billie Joe Armstrong and director/co-writer Michael Mayer’s decision to emphasize songs over story may have actually done them a favor; it keeps the action moving swiftly and leaves little time to linger on narrative weakness. Purists on either side of the punk/Broadway divide will likely feel under-served by the mix, but for fans of both (and the ecstatic crowd seemed full of them), the evening offers a chaotic, cathartic experience. B"

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: "Bottom Line: Theatrical version of Green Day's acclaimed concept album will need to attract all of the band's fans it can muster."

David Sheward, Backstage.com:"Like its spiritual grandfather "Hair," "American Idiot" breaks all the rules of musical theater. Conventional plot structure is replaced with poetic ruminations on confusion, need, and disconnection. Mayer's spectacular staging provides the solid framework the book lacks. Fantasy figures fly and burst out of TV screens, scaffolding transforms into a soul-killing office environment, and coaches become cars."

Michael Kuchwara: Associated Press: " Fans of the recording most likely will marvel at this theatrical take on "American Idiot." It will give then a stunning visualization of what they already have on their iPods or CD players. Others might want a little more from the characters who are displaying such all-consuming angst."

Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune: "That's what sustains “American Idiot” (developed at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre) for its 90 minutes, and that's what stays in your head for days thereafter. The singing, especially from John Gallagher Jr., but sustained across performers such as Stark Sands, Michael Esper, Mary Faber and Tony Vincent, is frequently breathtaking. And the choreographer, Steven Hoggett, has somehow found a swooping, stuttering organic vocabulary that makes head-banging quite a beautiful act. A delicate line has been walked here between the purity of anger and the needs of filling a colorful stage. It has been walked with great precision and creativity, but it works mostly because this “American Idiot” is a true and honest theatricalization of Green Day's inherently theatrical music."

Brendan Lemon, The Financial Times: "Their fates will be familiar to anyone who has seen Hair and its progeny: Johnny embraces drugs; Will gets his girlfriend pregnant; Tunny goes off to war. The point here isn’t story but style, and American Idiot delivers its predictable message (life, especially its US variety, can sometimes suck) in spectacular fashion. The poster-plastered, video-monitored set of Christine Jones and the driving orchestrations of Tom Kitt keep everything in visceral motion. Only the choreography of Steven Hoggett, beloved for his work on Black Watch, disappoints, its gibber-and-twitch vocabulary too often suggestive of over-caffeinated zombies. Otherwise, American Idiot ignites. ( )"

Rob Harvilla, The Village Voice: "But the result, though vivid and lurid and imaginatively depraved, is also somewhat inarticulate, spraying its boilerplate discontent at no one in particular, with a lotta standard-issue bitching about The Media and The Man."

Jesse Oxfeld, The New York Observer: "It’s fun. But it’s also, amid all the booming rock, a little dull. You’re diverted, but you’re not moved. There are archetypes and themes, but there aren’t really characters or a plot. American Idiot is a concert; it’s not a play."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: "The new Broadway musical "American Idiot" starts off at a fever pitch -- and stays there. By the time it ends, 90 minutes later, you may feel more numbed than stirred."

Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News: "Fans of Green Day may well find bliss in "American Idiot," the latest rock concert to pose as a Broadway show. There are six of them, if you're counting. With scorching arrangements by Tom Kitt (who just won a Pulitzer for his "Next to Normal" score), the songs sneer and whine just as a rock-n-roll concert ought to. Still, 90 minutes of barbaric yawp does not an opera, punk or otherwise, make. "

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: "If you're content to just let the pop-rock and color and lights sweep you up, you're going to have a good time."