Review: Jobsite Theater Presents Green Day's Rocking AMERICAN IDIOT at the Jaeb

Cooler than Rent, more rockin’ than Spring Awakening, more pertinent to our current world than Hair, Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT is just about the most galvanizing rock musical you’ll find anywhere. Who knew sturm and drang could be so much fun?  Jobsite’s superb production of it currently plays at the Jaeb Theatre in the Straz Center (and runs through August 9th), and it’s just about the fastest 88 minutes that I can recall.  I found myself caught up in the dark storyline, as well as the shattering performances and creative staging, while also tapping my feet throughout it. This is one of the few head-banging musicals that works.  If there’s one flaw in it, it’s that I didn’t want it to end.   

I've been a Green Day fan for over thirty years when I first encountered their third studio album, Dookie, in a Los Angeles Virgin Records store. "Longview" played and there I was, a disaffected member of Generation Jones (a group of individuals so lost that we didn’t belong to any generation, not the boomers and not Gen X).  The song perfectly mirrored my mood on that lonely road in the land of lost angels. I bought the cassette tape (I still didn't have a CD player yet) and knew instantly that this was it, the soundtrack of my life.

Ten years later, during the early stages of the Iraq War and just before the dispiriting election of 2004 that saw George W. Bush attain a second term, Green Day’s masterpiece, AMERICAN IDIOT was released. Again, for people like me, smiling outcasts who felt helpless and defeated with the way the world was turning, the music 100% captured the zeitgeist, the disillusionment so many of us couldn’t shake. The work reflected a generation's aggressive disenchantment, like Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols for the 1970s or Nirvana's Nevermind in the 1990s. Listening to Green Day’s music and words in a world that was so f**ked-up, I suddenly didn't feel alone. 

In 2010, I was shocked to hear that this iconic album, one that blisteringly captured our samsara, was being turned into a stage musical.  It would eventually  become a Broadway hit (with music by Green Day; lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong; and the book by Armstrong and Michael Mayer).  AMERICAN IDIOT ran for 422 performances and was nominated for a Best Musical Tony Award (losing to Memphis). The original cast also won a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album of 2010. 

I’ve seen AMERICAN IDIOT various times, and each time it begs the question: How do you capture the fury and ferocity of punk in a musical theatre show?  How does Green Day fit into this staid category,  a popular genre that has given us enough bland musicals that, by comparison, make easy-listening guru Burt Bacharach appear hardcore? Can punk, pop-punk or post-punk (or whatever you want to label Green Day’s music) be contained in a traditional musical format?  Can it thrive in the same world where you’ll find the yawny likes of Song of Norway or Bye Bye Birdie, the latter trying to be hip and cash in on the spirit of rock and Elvis but couldn't come close?

Musical theatre is notoriously unhip and unpunk. The format itself keeps the fury locked in a box, and so many of those composing for it are show people instead of rockers.  That’s why AMERICAN IDIOT works; it’s authentic and no one dares question the rockin’ credentials of Green Day and Billie Joe Armstrong. 

AMERICAN IDIOT (the musical) centers on three slacker friends: Johnny, Tunny and Will. Johnny, also known as the Jesus of Suburbia, escapes from the clutches of his parents and the dullsville of suburbia and flees to the city where he hooks up with a girl, Whatsername.  Drugs turn his life upside down and shred everything that he loves.  Tunny also escapes the doldrums of suburbia and eventually joins the military where he gets injured in battle; he dreams of a dancing earth angel he dubs “Extraordinary Girl.”  And Will, the ultimate slacker, doesn’t follow them; he just sits on his couch all day long, playing video games or sucking on a bong as if he’s a bugler blowing “Taps.” Will lives a life of sloth, of numbed nothingness, neglecting everything especially his pregnant girlfriend, Heather.

On paper, the plot reads dry; but on stage, it bursts with electricity.  This is a show that must spotlight its (mostly) young cast, that gives us an idea of what it means to be young, lost and stingingly cynical.  Even those unfortunate enough never to have heard of Green Day will enjoy its never-ending energy.  But to those who proudly proclaim their pro-GD status (there were plenty of Green Day t-shirts on parade the night I saw the show), or to those who generally prefer their musicals amped-up, jolting and dark (an audible stimulant), then this is the show for you.   

The performances are tops.  Leading the way, in a true star turn, is Cody Farkas as Johnny.  Farkas portrayed ex-Beatle John Lennon in a previous play, Whiskey & Soda, and he takes some of that Lennon anger and adds the rollicking angsty verve of Billie Joe Armstrong to create a truly memorable character.  Likable, always on the edge, he changes when his foreboding, oddball alter ego (and pusher), St. Jimmy, enters.  We see the disillusionment, the withered slackerdom, like a balloon that’s lost its helium.  It would be utterly depressing, but Mr. Farkas’ charisma shines though and he gives a monumental, towering performance.

Spencer Meyers is otherworldly as Johnny’s demented alter ego, St. Jimmy.  Imagine a Goth Titanoboa slinking across the stage, stalking its prey.  On the back of his vest we see the St. Jimmy symbol, which involves an inverted cross entwined with a heart (chaos meets love, rebellion meets solitude).  With his quasi, half-hearted mohawk, donned in head-to-toe black, his eyes smeared and blanketed with dark makeup, Mr. Meyers brings to mind Wez, the psychotic biker in The Road Warrior.  And he sings fabulously.  For anyone who has seen Mr. Meyers’ Hedwig, this is no surprise; punk and glam are proving to be his musical theatre wheelhouse.

Local actor and musician Matthew Morris is sensational as Tunny.  He’s the closest to an actual rocker that we get, with his long oily hair, drenched in sweat.  He’s like a young Mark Lanegan and he sings marvelously, especially in “Are We the Waiting” and “Before Lobotomy.”  

Jaryn McCann as Will really brings to life the dead-inside nothingness of the character.  Sitting on the couch for most of the show, he resembles a pothead Puggsley Addams and we understand the frustration of his girlfriend, Heather (well-played by Noa Friedman), who keeps trying to block him from the TV monitor while he keeps trying to push her pregnant frame out of the way. 

Kiara Dorothea is quite memorable as Whatsername, and Mariela Zeno is, yes, extraordinary as the Extraordinary Girl and as various ensemble parts.  Ms. Zeno stands out in a musical of standout performances, always jolting the energy to the next level whenever she enters (she and Cody Farkas tie as my choices for best in show). 

The ensemble is brilliantly utilized, filling the stage, hanging on the rafters of the balcony, floating in and out of the action, wandering, meandering, always entertaining.  They include a true rocker Ev Frederick; Katie Huettel; Kayley Jewel (the grungiest-looking of the bunch, giving off a Rayanne Graff from My So-Called Life vibe); Mandi Rotolo; an extremely powerful Troy Ochoa-Rowland; looming and lively Alex Rodriguez; and Kayla Witoshynsky.  Last but not least, playing a variety of roles, Jacqueline St. Pierre exudes the dynamism, the grunge soul, needed for a show like this; another standout performance.   

Your favorite Green Day songs—“Wake Me Up Before September Ends,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and “21 Guns”—get the A+ treatment and you’ll find yourself humming them to yourself on the way to your car afterwards. 

The singing is goosebump-inducing, the harmonies on point.  Music director Jeremy Douglass gets a truly rocking band that sounds tight and yet doesn’t lose sight of the rollicking rock energy  necessary for this production.  The band, seen onstage, includes Elwood Bond on drums (fabulous!), Joe Grady on bass, Tom Kersey on cello, Mark Warren and Dan Mockensturm on guitars, with Mr. Douglass leading the way on keys. 

Chris Giuffre’s set, aided by Jo Averill-Snell’s effective lighting, works wonders: scaffolding with several flat-screen monitors hovering above the stage.  A giant upside down American flag sits in the back, with the stars turning into various other shapes throughout the production (like hearts for the Johnny-Whatsername love scenes).  Sound gets the job done, though there were some glitches early on opening night, some mics not on at the proper time and others emitting some unwanted noise.

The various projections and videos playing on the monitors (and on the upside down American flag) added so much without taking away from the magic of the cast onstage.   

Director David Jenkins, along with his choreographer Alexander Jones, has created a pulsating, soul-stirring night of theater.  The bodies of the cast were in such fluid motion, wandering around the set, that sometimes we couldn’t make out who was crooning at certain points.  It’s a busy musical, and I oftentimes kept looking around to see who was singing.  But it’s a nonstop affair, with the best songs of the past 25 years performed at the highest level.  Never once was I bored, never once did my mind wander. The production was so energetic, so meaningful, yet still so much fun, that you can’t help but fall in love with it. 

As proven by the Jobsite production, AMERICAN IDIOT is not a relic of the past.  We do not look at it as period piece the way we do Hair and other rock musicals.  It doesn’t just speak for our post-9/11 world of decades ago.  It speaks for today, where our country once again is caught in a questionable conflict, where the American public feels at a loss to do anything to change the course of our world where oligarchs and a new breed of American idiots have taken over.  “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was written over twenty years ago, but we’re still walking those lonely streets.  We still pray to be awakened when September (or any nightmarish month) ends.  We still feel like outsiders, alone knowing the party (the American dream) is elsewhere: "Nobody likes you, everyone left you...They're all out without you, having fun…”

With this dynamite cast, and in this perfect performing space for the show at hand, this AMERICAN IDIOT is a don’t-miss affair.  Perfect for the summertime blahs and perfect for our world today.  Is this the best Jobsite musical I've seen?  I don't know, but it's certainly in the running.

Jobsite Theater’s blazing production of Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT runs thru August 9th. Photography by James Zambon Productions. 

Reader Reviews

To post a comment, you must register and login.

Need more Tampa Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...