Review: AMERICAN IDIOT at Abbey Theater Of Dublin

Every decade, bands strive to produce its own version of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” an album that makes the leap from pop culture to art. The 80s had U2’s “Joshua Tree,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” The Police’s “Synchronicity” to name a few. In the 90s, you had Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” among many others.

Only a few of those era’s iconic rock albums, -- The Who’s TOMMY and Alanis Morissette’s “JAGGED LITTLE PILL,” – have what it takes to be turned into a successful Broadway Musical.

Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT is one such album. Ten years after the release of the iconic album of the 2000-10 decade, AMERICAN IDIOT began a 422-show run at the St. James Theatre on Broadway.

Members of the Abbey Theater of Dublin’s Summer Pre-Professional Actors group close out its two-week run of the show this weekend with 7 p.m. shows Aug. 14, 16, and 17 at the theater (5600 Post Road in Dublin).

Co-director Joe Bishara began the pre-professional program when he first came over from the CATCO troupe four years ago to give young actors a chance to do some edgier shows. After doing RENT, LES MISERABLES, and GREASE during previous summers, Bishara really wanted to challenge his actors this year.

“I've been building towards AMERICAN IDIOT the whole time I've been here because it's a musical that I've always been enamored with,” he said.  “I think it's best with this age range of high schoolers going into college. The characters in this show are frustrated with living in Jingletown and they romanticize moving to the big city.”

Bryce Barta, Eric Lavery, Logan Melick, Ainsley Mustard, Bella Mytinger, Angelina Powell, Ava Rogers, and Brady Williams faced a bigger challenge this summer when Bishara cast them in a second show ALICE BY HEART, which is performed at 2 p.m. at the Abbey on the same days as AMERICAN IDIOT.

In some cases, it is like going down a rabbit hole and ending up in the sewer of suburbia.

“During the four weeks of rehearsal, they’d come in at 4:00 pm. and work on IDIOT until 6:30 p.m., get a half hour break and then come back for ALICE rehearsal until 9:30 p.m.,” Bishara said. “The two shows have completely different styles. It's like pop rock melodies versus in-your-face rock.”

In AMERICAN IDIOT, a gritty 90-minute, one-act show, three teenagers, Johnny (portrayed by Lev Hund), Tunny (Lavery) and Will (Williams) try to survive in a post 9-11 society. Tunny and Junny flee the cultural repression of Jingletown suburbia for the bohemian “freedom” of the big city while Will stays at home attempting to make a life with his pregnant girlfriend Heather (Mytinger).

And since it’s a Green Day musical, nothing works out the way the trio envisions. Tunny decides to leave the slacker, couch crashing lifestyle and enlists. After meeting the girl of his dreams, Whatshername (Powell), Johnny gets sucked into a drug-crazed world governed by St. Jimmy (Nicolas Burnet). Will can’t make the commitment to fatherhood and Rachel takes the baby and leaves.

Those who are looking for a happy, feel-good ending should heed the lyrics of the title song: “Welcome to a new kind of tension/All across the alien nation/where everything isn’t meant to be okay.”

What is refreshing about AMERICAN IDIOT is since it’s a pre-professional project, the entire cast is in the 14-19 age range. That is about the same age as the characters in the show. This cast doesn’t come across as amateurish. Lavery nails his role as Tunny, who comes home from the Gulf War broken, both physically and mentally. Hund’s wrestling with his inner demons and St. Jimmy feels real as did Williams’ portrayal of a teenager struggling with apathy and responsibility.

Although it is labeled as a “punk rock musical,” Mytinger, Powell and Emma Shachter (who plays “Extraordinary Girl”) provide soothing counterpoints to the show’s growling tracks.

While Green Day as a band didn’t perform in AMERICAN IDIOT while the show was on Broadway, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong did sit in as St. Jimmy, the patron saint of bad decisions, in a handful of performances. It’s easy to see why: Jimmy is one of the most fun roles in the show.

Burnet clearly enjoys the character as he scowls and snarks his way through his stage appearances like an insane doubleganger of Guy Fieri.

One of the signatures of Green Day’s music is their uneasy marriage of screeching guitars and violin strings. The nine-piece orchestra, under the direction of Jonathan Collura and conducted by keyboardist Brandon Ring, handles that challenge well. The string section of Mathew Kinnear (violin), Jaryn Danz (viola) and James McDermott (cello) compliments the rock band of guitarists Luis Gonzales and Drew Steadman, drummer William Mayer and bassist Eric Stratton.

 Also, Iz Nichols’ lighting design and CG Ryan’s video and media design took away the need for an elaborate set, providing a cool backdrop for the show.

 Green Day purists, however, might struggle a little bit with AMERICAN IDIOT. Some might find the sanitation of the band’s colorful lyrics a little unsettling. For example, co-directors Bishara and Jamie Markovich McMahon decided to replace a homophobic slur in the title track with the word “maggot.” My personal favorite is when a cast member’s f bomb is defused when another actor crashes into her and causes her to say “hey!” instead of what is originally written.

While all of the songs from the original album are used in the musical, AMERICAN IDIOT grabbed other Green Day tunes from “20th Century Breakdown” (“Last of the American Girls,” “Last Night on Earth,” “Before the Lobotomy" as well as the hits “21 Guns” and “Know Your Enemy”), “Nimrod” (the powerful show closer, “Good Riddance: The Time of Your Life”), and other sources (the previously unreleased “When It's Time" and the British B side “Too Much, Too Soon.”)

However, the faults are few and far between in the Abbey Theater of Dublin’s production of the show. AMERICAN IDIOT goes to show that the next great show may not come from Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Maybe it will be found in the lyrics of an angry punk band.

The best way to sum up the show can be found in the lyrics of the finale: “For what it's worth, it was worth all the while/It's something unpredictable/But in the end, it's right.”

Photos: Jerri Shafer
 

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