Review Roundup: Billie Joe Armstrong's THESE PAPER BULLETS! Opens Off-Broadway

The New York premiere of Pulitzer Prize finalist and Emmy Award nominated writer Rolin Jones and Tony Award nominee and Grammy Award winning Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong's new play with music THESE PAPER BULLETS!, directed by Jackson Gay, opened last night, December 15, at Atlantic Theater Company.

THESE PAPER BULLETS! features James Barry (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Stephen DeRosa (On the Town), Bryan Fenkart (Memphis), Christopher Geary (Off Broadway debut), Brad Heberlee (Small Mouth Sounds), Justin Kirk (Other Desert Cities, "Weeds"), Tony Manna (Timon of Athens), Andrew Musselman (Off Broadway debut), Keira Naughton (The Rivals), Adam O'Byrne (Off Broadway debut), Lucas Papaelias (Once), Nicole Parker (Wicked), Greg Stuhr (Fish in the Dark), Ariana Venturi (Dance Dance Revolution) and Liz Wisan (Other Desert Cities).

Meet the Quartos: Ben, Claude, Balth, and Pedro. Can these fab four from Liverpool find true love in London and cut an album in seven nights? A modish rip-off of Much Ado About Nothing with a serious backbeat.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Michael Dale, BroadwayWorld: The idea behind Rolin Jones' THESE PAPER BULLETS! is just so good; a blatant rip-off of Shakespeare's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING styled as one of Richard Lester's farcical, swinging Beatles movies. On top of that, add Billie Joe Armstrong, who can probably write ten catchy riffs a day before breakfast, writing Fab Four pastiche numbers that strongly suggest hit tunes like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and "Please, Please Me," yet have a vibrancy all their own. And at first it looks like it's going to be a fun night...The parallels work and Jones' script has clever moments...but the overwritten text is full of soggy dialogue and extended bits...that aren't especially funny...Jackson Gay's frothy direction is built on fun splashes of the mod era and the capable cast dives right in, but the indisputable highlights of the piece come any time the boys dig into Armstrong's jaunty lyrics and bouncy melodies. A new musical from this composer/lyricist is definitely in order.

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: ...the jangling rock tunes by Billie Joe Armstrong, of Green Day fame, provide energizing interludes in Rolin Jones's wholesale rewrite of the original comedy...Jolly though it remains throughout, "These Paper Bullets!" becomes exhausting as Mr. Jones piles on the complications...What has most crucially gone missing, unfortunately, is any depth of feeling in the main characters...Almost alone among the principals, Mr. Fenkart brings nuance and texture to his performance as Claude...Mr. Kirk and Ms. Parker manage to work up some chemistry, but perhaps because their repartee lacks the acidic brilliance necessary, the Bea-and-Ben story line...fades into the background...Best of all are the songs...When the boys pick up their guitars and start wagging those shaggy heads, "These Paper Bullets!" makes you forget the sometimes forced machinations of the comedy and want to unleash your inner swooning teenager.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: Unfortunately, These Paper Bullets! is not a musical, but rather a laborious farce, uneasily combining satirical riffs on The Bard with tired spoofing of The Fab Four. Since both ideas have been done to death over the years, there's little that's fresh here, although admittedly plenty of energy is expended in the execution...Awkwardly interpolating bits of Shakespearean verse, the show wears thin very quickly, with the overstuffed, convoluted plot further burdened by the generally witless dialogue...director Jackson Gay succeeds in creating a frenetically paced atmosphere redolent of mod London. The performers certainly give it their all...But the chief pleasures of the show stem from the handful of Armstrong's original pastiche songs, which ape the Beatles' music in all its glorious exuberance and stylistic diversity...The problem is that there aren't nearly enough of them, and there's too much of everything else.

Adam Feldman, Time Out NY: Merry sex warriors spin like a record on the turntable stage of These Paper Bullets!, Rolin Jones's cheeky revamp of Much Ado About Nothing...Jones's script incorporates a surprising amount of Much Ado's original language, which splashes amusingly through the lads' Liverpudlian accents. Though faithful to the fake-infidelity plot of his source, Jones takes liberties with story...Snappily directed by Jackson Gay, with tremendous costumes by Jessica Ford, These Paper Bullets! fizzes with the comedy of sexual liberation. Naughton is hilariously louche, and Parker's bravura physical comedy made me laugh harder than anything I've seen at the theater all year. The show is well acted all around, but the women are particularly fab.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: There's potential in shifting a Shakespeare rom-com to 1960s London. The mod vibe, the sexy mini-skirts, the groovy music are all up for grabs. Too bad "These Paper Bullets!"...misses the mark when it comes to being fully engaging. This play with music comes off labored and overlong, despite a fine ensemble and direction by Jackson Gay, whose staging packs energy and clever live video...Armstrong's pastiche pop songs hit the right notes...But the script by Jones, who made roller derby a hoot in "The Jammer," is short on laughs. The cast seems to have more fun than the audience.

Matt Windman, AM New York: It sounded like such a great idea...Alas, "These Paper Bullets!" is such a meandering mess that it is hard to believe that Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company agreed to produce it in the first place...The main problem lies in Rolin Jones' labored, overlong script, which uneasily combines lines from the original text with colloquial language...Jackson Gay's direction is not so great. The cast (led by Justin Kirk and Nicole Parker) tries too hard to win laughs with broad, frantic antics, and visually the production is ugly and cluttered. Armstrong's songs, which evoke early Beatles pop, are pleasant, but there are only a few of them and they do not advance the storytelling.

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: Toss some Shakespeare and some Beatles into the blender and you might get These Paper Bullets! a musical smoothie I'm happy to report does no damage to either and offers some charming surprises of its own...Jones has a gift for reconstituting Shakespearean dialogue with just enough sampling of the real thing to keep us feeling both amused and smart. Even more impressive, each of Armstrong's songs mimics an identifiable number from the Lennon/McCartney canon while ingeniously turning the songs inside out...Add to that sensational orchestrations for the gifted foursome by Tom Kitt and staging by Jackson Gay that suggests Feydeau, and you have a pretty savvy spooflé.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Whether you will like These Paper Bullets! - the new Bard-on-Carnaby Street confection at the Atlantic - will probably depend on how much you like Much Ado About Nothing. Depend inversely, I mean. If that most deeply human of Shakespeare's comedies means little to you, its adaptation as a play with music (not really a musical) may amuse. Otherwise you are likely to find it, as I did, leaden, juvenile, chaotic, and nearly intolerable, except when it sings. Then, it's nice.

Robert Hofler, TheWrap: ..."These Paper Bullets!"...[is] based on the Bard's "Much Ado About Nothing," and it makes you wonder why anyone would rework an f-king old plot about lovers who are deceived into thinking they've been unfaithful..."These Papers Bullets!" not only purports to be a comedy. It's also a musical, and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong has written a few songs that present a very good facsimile of the Beatles work before they went to India and dropped acid. There isn't enough of Armstrong's music and there's way too much of Jones' book, which achieves the uneasy feat of being both arch and frenetic. Jackson Gay directs the actors to scream and gesticulate like crazy people. Only Justin Kirk as one of the Quartos (shades of McCartney or Lennon) manages to deliver a somewhat subdued performance...

Alexis Soloski, The Guardian: Rolin Jones's These Paper Bullets, a frolicsome and occasionally tiresome adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, is built for those who prefer their iambic pentameter with a strong backbeat...The conceit is undeniably clever and the mod modernisation works pretty well...Jackson Gay's direction is playful and the musical numbers are a treat...but the evening isn't as much fun as it ought to be. The first act in particular takes an awful long time to get going and the script hews too closely to the structure of the original when short cuts would be welcome. It sometimes seems as though Jones is torn between wanting to preserve the classic and wanting to upheave it. All he needs is love -- and a dramaturge...The acting on the whole is quite good, if you politely discount the accents...Whatever the faults of the script, one can applaud their hard day's night.

Photo Credit: Ahron Foster

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