Review: AMERICAN IDIOT Could Be 'the Time of Your Life' at EPAC

Billie Joe Armstron and his band Green Day had a hit with their rock opera concept album, AMERICAN IDIOT, in 2004, which they transformed into a Tony-winning Broadway musical in 2009. Let me halt right here - if the names "Billie Joe Armstrong" and "Green Day" do not register, if you are unfamiliar with punk rock (or dislike it), or if you don't like sung-through musicals, the show might be an issue for you. If you're familiar with relatively modern pop and rock (Green Day has been around since 1986), care about the apathy and apparent meltdown of a generation, or if you've loved rock opera since TOMMY, it's great music and a good show.

It's currently at Ephrata Performing Arts Center, directed by Rich Repkoe, and shaking up the local theatre scene just as it did Broadway. As with Broadway, however, great music and a solid cast can't cover the facts that if you don't know the story it's hard to follow, and that the plot and character development are weak. Let's put it like this: Go for the great concert. See one of America's great punk rock albums, plus some other Green Day numbers, live in front of you with great lighting by Jeff Cusano. It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time - you might just have the time of your life.

The saddest thing of the story line weakness and lack of character development is that, like RENT, AMERICAN IDIOT touches on youth disaffection and struggle. Johnny, Will, and Tunny (Sean Deffley, Adam Dienner, and Jessie Hoffman), are sick of small, suburban "Jingletown". They're mad at the world in a post-adolescent but unclear kind of way. Will stays in Jingletown with his pregnant girlfriend Heather (Sydne Lyons). Johnny and Tunny move to the city, because, city. Tunny, with nothing to do, is captured by the spirit of the military and joins the Army, while our anti-hero, Johnny, a frustrated musician, finds better living through heroin. His hooked-up alter-ego, St. Jimmy (Justin Monick) is the better looking, cooler, Johnny. Heroin helps him find and bed Whatshername (Heidi Carletti).

Will and Heather split when living together fails; she finds a rock and roll boyfriend. Tunny is shot and disabled in the war, where he's nursed back to a semblance of health by Extraordinary Girl (Alyssa Dienner). Johnny finally gets clean, loses his girl, and, like Tunny, heads back to Jingletown sadder but perhaps in some way wiser, where the three friends reunite. Tunny, though an amputee, has his girl. Will lost his girl but she left him the baby. Johnny is... Johnny, now off the horse. What have any of them learned? The show never quite gets that far, being picaresque rather than deep. If their experiences have changed them for better or for ill, the show never quite tells us; perhaps you should make the best of this test and don't ask why. It's not even quite clear if the show finds heroin chic a good thing or a bad one, merely beautifully costumed by Kate Willman - although Oscar Wilde would find the costuming more important than a moral, it's true.

Go to hear Sean Deffley sing "Jesus of Suburbia" and "When it's Time." Go to see the staging of "Favorite Son" and "Extraordinary Girl" (silk-rope acrobatics included). Go to feel "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (not the Tony Bennett song, if you're of a certain age), "Too Much, Too Soon," and "Wake Me Up When September Comes." If you're a Jim Morrison fan, go to catch St. Jimmy. Lighting and costuming make the event a great concert. The visuals are wonderful - take the photographs and still frames in your mind.

As a musical? Sung-throughs always have their problems, though LES MISERABLES comes as close as any musical to full character development for the leads, and distilled a huge book well enough to find a discernable plot. CATS was all character development and a barely-there plot. AMERICAN IDIOT? As Gertrude Stein said of Brooklyn, "there's no there, there." With Cusano's fine light show, great costuming, and the music of the 1.21 Band, see this for the concert version of the album. Be wary of the sound, however, as the band's fine music often plays over the equally fine singing, and there were opening night microphone issues, especially, unfortunately, for Tunny.

One word of caution: If you don't like strong language - and I do mean strong - used very heavily throughout a show, you'll be very uncomfortable with this, but then, you probably would prefer not to be listening to Green Day's music anyway.

The rest of us will bring our lighters. Because we're feeling the music. And if you feel it, to misquote Green Day's own words, "I hope you have the time of your life."

At Ephrata Performing Arts Center through August 6. Visit ephrataperformingartscenter.com for tickets and information.

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