So I went to go see American Idiot, which to be honest was sort of disappointing. For all the avant-garde anger of the concept album, the musical was alarmingly mainstream. While from a technical and performance aspect it was pretty phenomenal, I couldn't help but feel let down. First of all, any play that you have to read the wikipedia summary just to understand... is not actually a good play. Second of all, everyone got off scott-free at the end. It would be really, really nice if, for once when writing a musical about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, not everyone got a happy ending. Like, why did I just watch Jesus of Suburbia run away to the big city to do hard drugs if at the end he goes back to Bumfuck, New Jersy to hang out at the 7-11 with absolutely no consequences? Everyone got a happy ending, more or less, except for the ambiguously-skinhead ambiguously-gay ambiguously-real drug dealing St. Jimmy.
Seriously I would have watched a whole play about the drug-dealing leader of an Anarchist Cult of Personality, but I digress. The point is, American Idiot is no Spring Awakening, despite its shared leading man (Oh John Gallagher Jr, I sure do love you). In fact, it's not even Rent or even Hair, if we want to go really far back. It's Anarchy Lite, so you can pretend you're being edgy but it's still fun for the whole family. Your ten year old already knows the word "fuck" and has probably puzzled out how sex works, so what's the harm, right? Sure there's some drugs, some beer, some masturbation, but really... there's nothing in here that won't offend your grandmother.
(Well, maybe... Is your grandmother as liberal as mine, who loved Avenue Q? Because Avenue Q might just be edgier than this.)
Anyway, so what's Leez been up to this week? (I promise, this discussion's going to loop back around to my complaints about American Idiot in a moment.) Leez has been hanging out at the Young Playwrights Inc. conference where she's making new friends, doing a lot of revising, and attending master classes. Well, she was, because it's over now and the whirlwind has stopped and she's taking some time to sit down and write a proper blog post about it. (Actually, gonna cut the whole third person thing.)
Anyways, so one of the great master classes was with a playwright named Thomas Bradshaw, whose work tends to be a bit... controversial. One of the things we talked about was how Americans tend to be very puritanical towards sex, drugs, etc in our theater, as opposed to Europeans who are a bit more loosey-goosey free love. The flip side of this is, of course, that Americans are morbidly fascinated by the stuff that repulses them. So we want to see violence, but not too much violence. We want to see sex, but we want people to get under the covers or turn off the lights first.
Which is exactly what American Idiot does. The sex is covered up, the drug use is stylized, guns shoot flags that say bang. For a play that is ostensibly about the Bush years, it doesn't really say anything about the Bush years at all. There's grandiose language, but it doesn't deliver. St. Jimmy preaches anarchy, but there's no anarchy to be seen. Everyone goes back to Bumfuck and gets off scott free. They all grow up.
Everybody lives.
Everybody lives, and I didn't give a fuck, because not one of these characters was worth giving a fuck about. I was intrigued by St. Jimmy, but I have to compare him to Graverobber from Repo: The Genetic Opera, because I think they're part of an emerging class of character... the Squandered Badass. He's that dude who despite not doing a whole lot of anything is just sort of the most memorable part of the show. A character who, due to being more interesting or better played than anyone else, just seems wasted because of their small role. I don't really care about Jesus of Suburbia. He's a whiny angsty white boy. But St. Jimmy - who is he? What's his story? I know one interpretation is that he's just a figment of JoS's imagination, or else an alter ego he invents, but I kind of like the Anarchist Cult story better. (Although if he is JoS then it explains why he's so ineffectual.)
Basically, I watched this musical and just started thinking of ways that, given the album, I could have done it better. Maybe I'm just getting too jaded and cerebral for Broadway musicals. Or maybe I missed the point. I didn't hate the show - from a tech and performance standpoint it was excellent - I was just underwhelmed by the story. It didn't live up to its themes and my expectations.
Maybe when you write a musical about the Bush years, it's helpful to actually mention any significant events from the Bush years, yeah?
I'll write more about YPI at a later date, hope you enjoyed my rant.
