Did anyone see American Idiot/ Spring Awakeing?

[Shaunthedog]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 6:59pm

The originals of both just wondering how were they? 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 7:42pm

I did.   I didn't care for AI....and I'm a huge fan of both the music and the cast.  (I do like the recording, however.)   I actually like SA a great deal, on an emotional level, but it had its flaws that became more obvious as the run continued.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 8:19pm

Loved Spring Awakening, saw it with the original Broadway cast. My daughters saw the revival and thought it was fantastic. Music of American Idiot was great but the book was pretty lame.

[uncageg]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 8:53pm

Saw Spring Awakening at The Atlantic before it transferred to Broadway. Met Steven Sater in the lobby at intermission. He just turned to me and asked If I was enjoying the show. Of course I was loving it. We were in the first row and that is a very intimate space. He then told me they were getting some great news that night and he was very excited. The whole creative team was there and I got to chat with Duncan Sheik. It was a pretty electric night at the theatre.  Saw it again on tour in Denver.  I was actually surprised how well it transferred to a larger stage but will never forget that night at the Atlantic.

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 9:20pm

I agree with yankeefan. SA (at Atlantic and on Broadway) was major. I consider AI one of the great scores of all time, but the book was not good enough. Another example of why directors shouldn't write books and bookwriters shouldn't direct. (In the same show, that is.) 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 9:49pm

Funny that we've gotten to a point where people ask this kind of question about shows that I actually did see. Usually people ask about things from before my time. 

I'll echo a lot of what has been said. I loved Spring Awakening a lot when I first saw it and for several years after, but now the flaws are starting to shine through a lot more for me. I LOVED the revival, though.

 

American Idiot is a very strange show for me, in that I really love it IN THEORY. I think the music and arrangements are excellent, and the staging and performances were also very strong. I actually saw the show 4 times, and every single time I thought I would like it more than the last time. I really wanted to like the show as a whole, but all 4 times I found it somewhat lacking. I guess it must have been the book, as others have said. But in hindsight I don't think the book was really that atrocious. The plot was thin, yes, but usually I'm not bothered by that in other shows. Oh well, it was what it was, I guess. I still really enjoy listening to the cast album.

 

 

 

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 10:06pm

I saw American Idiot in Berkeley and I felt like I'd been screamed at for an hour and a half. I tried to focus, but it felt so messy. And I kept thinking someone would get killed by that bus.

[icecreambenjamin]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 10:26pm

What do you consider to be the flaws of Spring Awakening?

[luvcaroline]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 11:10pm

Never saw Spring Awakening. 

I really wanted to like American Idiot, because I love Green Day. Many of the numbers were fantastic, but as a whole piece, it just didn't hold up. When I saw it I couldn't help but compare it to Passing Strange (my favorite rock musical), which was enthralling from beginning to end. 

[After Eight]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 11:22pm

I saw them both, alas! Both were horrible!

 

I'd say Spring Awakening was the more painful of the two to sit through.

 

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 11:43pm

After Eight said: "I saw them both, alas! Both were horrible! 

I'd say Spring Awakening was the more painful of the two to sit through."

I doubt you saw either but if you did, why did you go? To legitimize your status as a posturing troll? 

No one expects more of you than you deliver here. No one cares what you think about a show that is designed for you to describe as horrible. 

[GreasedLightning]

Posted: 8/6/16 at 11:51pm

I thought the book of AI kind of worked, a somewhat poetic anthem straight through. 

I, too, love Spring Awakening but am interested to hear what people think is flawed about the show. I agree, just want to see if our ideas are similar. 

[hork]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 12:07pm

I agree with the general consensus that American Idiot had a weak book, but the music and staging and set design were so amazing that I didn't really care. It was probably the most electrifying theatrical experience of my life.

Spring Awakening had the opposite problem, which is that the book was great but the songs were weak. But, again, I didn't really mind, because I didn't feel like the songs needed to be great (and the score has grown on me from repeated listenings). I liked the show quite a bit, even though I was bored through much of the second act.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 12:37pm

I have an easy answer for those who ask about the flaws of SPRING AWAKENING. For me it had the most lovely music (and vocal arrangements) paired with a set of the most nonsensical lyrics ever heard on Bway. I know, I know, I shouldn't be judging contemporary art songs by the standards of Bway standards. I don't care-- when I'm seeing a boy or girl tear their heart out onstage, I bloody well want to understand the meaning of the words they're wailing. 

Separately, I also found the basic thesis of the original Wedekind play (anyone with sexual impulses will be irrevocably punished in today's society) too extreme and untenable to build a show around. I thought the original Bway production couldn't overcome that basic flaw as we got deeper and deeper into Act II which seemed endless and repetitive. 

I give huge credit to the Deaf West revival for nearly repairing BOTH these issues when they widened the metaphor of youthful otherness by bringing in the experiences of the deaf. That brilliant stroke made a bothersome thesis really come alive anew, and with subtitles onstage, even those abstruse lyrics were better understood in the revival.  

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 12:40pm

Saw both.  Sam AMERICAN IDIOT the week before the Tony awards (I was seeing all the nominees.) I am not a fan of Green Day or that5 genre of music in particular. The story of a bunch of drug-addicted youths and their anger at the disappointments of their lives was uninviting. Also the music was too much of the same thing...that style of music is really only good for expressing anger.  There was some imaginative staging and enough scenes  of one character on stage in his underwear to at least hold my attention but nothing to arouse my sympathy for any of the characters.

SPRING AWAKENING holds more promise than it delivers. The original play is powerful and I hoped that audiences enjoying the musical would see the original (or at least read it.)  This one did arouse sympathy for the characters and some of the music was heartrendingly beautiful.  When the script strayed from the original source it fell apart. Of the two shows, It is the one I have most enjoyed seeing in subsequent productions especially with student casts close in age to the characters they are portraying.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 2:11pm

frontrowcentre2 said: "that style of music is really only good for expressing anger. "

That's very untrue and narrow-minded, IMO. Reminds me of when people say rap is only good for talking about drugs and sex. I'm actually not usually a fan of rock as a genre either, but I think the music in AI manages to express quite a few varied and nuanced emotions. Anger may be very prominent, but it's not the only emotion there at all. 

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 2:14pm

I wanted to like American Idiot, but it ended up feeling like that SNL socially-relevant high school theatre skit. 

I didn't expect to love Spring Awakening. The revival is probably my favorite piece of theatre. 

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 4:21pm

I thought American Idiot was incredible, far better than Spring Awakening.

[Glittergrrl]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 5:57pm

We saw AI when Billie Joe joined the cast-whenever that was.  I am a Green Day fan and I love the concept album, but I didn't really think the show worked.  I thought it could use more plot.  It didn't feel like a cohesive whole to me.  I had a much better time seeing them play live.

[darquegk]

Posted: 8/7/16 at 6:37pm

American Idiot is an interesting look at a quasi-auteur piece translated into a book musical. Score by Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day (mostly Billie Joe), book based primarily on the fragments of BJA's diary that were used in the liner notes of the original album to outline the plot. It feels the same to me as "tick tick... BOOM" does, like a one-man show that has been expanded into a full cast piece but still has a one-man show's unity of vision and perspective.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 8/8/16 at 7:04am

I've read a draft of the proposed screenplay for an AMERICAN IDIOT feature film that's in the offing. For those who wished the Bway show had more plot, you well may love the movie, which keeps every song from the live show and crams in just an incredible amount of incident and character development around those songs. Same exact plot as the show, same exact characters, but sadly the flying sequences are gone (which were my absolute favorite moments in the live show).

[lotiloti]

Posted: 8/8/16 at 8:58am

I didn't care for AI at all. It wanted to seem dangerous and radical, but achieved neither.

On the other hand SA I adored. The Deaf West revival, is an evenings theatre I will treasure forever.

[darquegk]

Posted: 8/8/16 at 10:16am

My reading of AI has always been that it is supposed to appear almost the opposite of dangerous and radical by the end. It's a show about resignation- resignation to the fact that you're not a real punk kid anymore, that life is gonna suck and there's really nothing you can do to improve your life or the world, and resignation that drugs just aren't fun anymore.

 

It's the anti-Pippin. Pippin discovers that maybe ordinary is wonderful after all. Johnny, Tunny and Will discover that ordinary sucks, but it's all you got. You burn out or you grow up.

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/8/16 at 11:54am

darquegk said: "My reading of AI has always been that it is supposed to appear almost the opposite of dangerous and radical by the end. It's a show about resignation- resignation to the fact that you're not a real punk kid anymore, that life is gonna suck and there's really nothing you can do to improve your life or the world, and resignation that drugs just aren't fun anymore.

It's the anti-Pippin. Pippin discovers that maybe ordinary is wonderful after all. Johnny, Tunny and Will discover that ordinary sucks, but it's all you got. You burn out or you grow up."

I think this is an example of a common tendency to expect musical theatre to tie things up with a bow, whether warranted or not. I agree the show does not aspire to be dangerous or radical. I think it dares to be honest, neither sympathetic nor damning, in limning a time. But beyond that, I don't see where you get your "read" from in what we see and hear at the end. I don't think it passes judgment on the future. 

 

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 8/8/16 at 1:08pm

Only saw SA. Love the score, hate hate hate the book and show/production. Just absolutely dreadful. I did appreciate how hard they worked to "discover" such incredible young talent, though.