American Idiot Musical

American idiot musical: American Idiot is a one-act, through-sung, stage musical adaption of rock band Green Day’s album of the same name.

The book is by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer. The lyrics are by Armstrong and the music is written by Armstrong and band mates Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool. Tom Kitt is the music supervisor and orchestrator. The lead producers for the show are Ira Pittelman and Tom Hulce.

Green Day does not appear in the production, but the show has an onstage band.

The musical opens on Johnny, Will and Tunny, three teenage friends unhappily living in suburbia (identified as Jingletown, USA) and saturated with TV (“American Idiot”). The three feel numbed by their mundane lives (“Jesus of Suburbia”) and decide to escape. Johnny (aka Jesus of Suburbia) borrows money from his mother and buys bus tickets to the city for himself and his friends. Will, however, learns that his girlfriend, Heather, is pregnant and decides to stay with her. Johnny and Tunny leave on a bus for the city with a group of other bored youths (“Holiday”).

While Johnny wanders the city and pines for a woman he sees in an apartment window (“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”), Tunny finds it hard to adjust to urban life and is seduced by a flashy television ad for the army (“Favorite Son”). Tunny realizes that all his life, he has been waiting, waiting for something, and that his generation has been so numbed bytelevision that nothing, not even the bright lights of the city, will excite him (“Are We the Waiting”) and enlists in the army.

Frustrated by his friend’s departure and his inability to find girls or fun, Johnny comes into contact with a charismatic, Marilyn Manson-like drug dealer who calls himself “St. Jimmy”, and experiences the rush of heroin for the first time with Jimmy at his side (“St. Jimmy”)

As Johnny medicates himself with heroin, Will sits on the couch as his girlfriend goes further into her pregnancy, drinking beer and begging for some kind of release (“Give Me Novacaine”). Tunny is deployed to a war zone, presumably Iraq (images of the March 2003 “shock and awe” campaign are seen on the TV screens in the background). He is shot and wounded.

Jimmy has given Johnny exactly what he wanted: girls and fun. After spending the night with the girl he saw in the window, who hecalls “Whatsername” (“She’s a Rebel”), the two go to a club and take drugs together, sharing an addiction.

Will has difficulty accepting the idea of fatherhood, and Heather becomes increasingly irritated with his immaturity. Despite his entreaties to stay, she eventually leaves him, taking their baby with her (“Too Much, Too Soon”). Will laments that everyone he cared for has abandoned him.

Lying in a bed in an army hospital, Tunny hallucinates about him and his nurse engaged in an almost-balletic aerial dance (“Extraordinary Girl”). He falls in love with her.

Jimmy reappears and offers Johnny drugs, but he refuses, watching Whatsername sleep, Johnny muses on their relationship (“When It’s Time”). But the temptation is too great, and Jimmy infects his mind, causing his behavior to become increasingly erratic, and he eventually threatens Whatsername, then himself, with a knife (“Know Your Enemy”). Whatsername attempts to calm him down, while the Extraordinary Girl dresses Tunny’s wounds and Will sits on the couch, once again alone.Whatsername decides she can’t deal anymore, leaves Johnny, but not before revealing that St. Jimmy was merely a figment of his imagination, a manifestation of his rage against his parents and the establishment .

Johnny is forced to admit that his stepfather, Brad, was right – his life had amounted to nothing (“Wake Me Up When September Ends”). St. Jimmy appears and makes one last attempt to get Johnny’s attention, but that part of him has died, and Jimmy “blows his brains out into the bay”. Johnny cleans up and gets a desk job, but eventually realizes that isn’t his destiny either. He returns to his hometown (“Homecoming”) and is reunited with Tunny (who has returned from war with the Extraordinary Girl) and Will (who has also been reunited with his child). At the end, Johnny laments that he lost the love of his life, Whatsername, and wonders where she is and what she’s doing .

“Green Day’s iconic album is one of the most brutally honest, eloquent, and poetically theatrical responses to the post 9/11 world that I have encountered,” Mayer said. “I hear in these amazing songs the frustration and anger and dreams of a lost generation of Americans. Collaborating withBillie Joe and the band has been a mind-blowing thrill from day one.”