Theatre Review: American Idiot at the Civic Theatre

Nearly 10 years after the first Broadway performance of American Idiot, the musical based on Green Day’s album of the same name has (finally) come to New Zealand.

The release of the politically charged 2004 album catapulted me into an obsession which lasted throughout my high school years. As someone who once claimed to be Green Day’s biggest fan, there was no way I’d miss their musical, and so I found myself  making the trip up to Auckland’s Civic Theatre earlier this week.

Green Day Fun Fact: The album American Idiot was originally written as a rock opera and the song Jesus of Suburbia was frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s attempt at his own Bohemian Rhapsody. Knowing this, it comes as no surprise that Green Day eventually followed in Queen’s footsteps by having their music adapted for the theatre.*

Sitting down to a TV screen flicking between static and news footage from 9/11 made me consider the show’s relevance nearly 20 years later, but Green Day’s response to the political landscape of early 2000s USA is just as applicable to today. Following Johnny, the self-styled Jesus of Suburbia and his adventures with St. Jimmy, we see the effects of drug addiction, mental illness, war and gun violence — issues we are unfortunately no strangers to here in New Zealand.

At the centre of the piece is a critique of the media: human figures with TVs for heads, painted on the set, suggest that the media sits at the root of these social problems. Occasionally, the TV screen was used to deliver flashy pre-recorded numbers in contrast with the gritty set, convincing Johnny’s friend Tunny to join the army and taunting Will with an unattainable lifestyle.

Indeed, the lyrics “nobody likes you, everyone left you, they’re all out without you having fun” ring even truer about today’s tendency to compare our own lives with the perfection we see on social media. But Johnny and Tunny’s experiences, culminating during the explosive performance of Give Me Novocaine showed the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

The musical arrangements started out sounding too similar to their album counterparts — as if performed by a tribute band — but I was soon impressed by the mixing of songs and styles, and talented cast, who acted, danced, sang, and played guitar, often at the same time. Tom Milner (Johnny) sounded remarkably like Armstrong in both speech and song, and it was a treat to see the band members interact with the characters in a breach of the fourth wall.

Unfortunately, I did have to wonder about the way women were shown on stage, limited to roles as nurturers while the three leading men find themselves. The show certainly doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but a moment of redemption was found during Letterbomb, when the women stormed the stage to deliver a middle finger to the men who have taken them for granted.

The show’s final number, Whatshername, was another highlight, creatively taking the audience through a flashback of the play’s events to show the story from a different perspective. And in true Green Day fashion, the cast returned to perform Good Riddance as an encore—a practice I’m not sure is usual in musical theatre but a more than fitting conclusion for this one.

Though many dark themes are explored, American Idiot is a high-energy, grungy rock show with flickers of comic relief throughout. As St. Jimmy suggests: “It’s comedy, and tragedy”, and it breathed a new life into the album despite having little dialogue outside of the lyrics performed.

Playing American Idiot on Spotify on the drive home, I couldn’t help notice many things that went over my head as a young teenager (like singing obliviously about being “the needle in the vein of the establishment”), and more importantly, a newfound appreciation for this iconic and at times poetic album.

American Idiot is showing at the Civic Theatre until October 20^th (tickets).

*Incidentally, the musical based on Queen’s music, We Will Rock You, is also currently showing at Clarence Street Theatre in Hamilton.