How to go
What: Green Day’s “American Idiot”
When: 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati
Cost: $30 and older
More info: 513-621-2787 or www.cincinnatiarts.org
The Broadway musical version of Green Day’s post-9/11 concept album, “American Idiot,” opened in 2009, and after skipping our backyard in subsequent national tours, it is finally making its Cincinnati debut at the Aronoff Center this weekend.
So what can longtime local fans of the album expect?
“Its part punk rock concert, part musical theater, and part play,” said Evan Jay Newman, musical director for the show. “We get a lot of Green Day fans who are shocked that musical theater doesn’t have to be a Rodgers and Hammerstein-type thing. And we also get a lot of theater people who end up going out and buying Green Day albums.”
Indeed, the show’s biggest challenge is appealing to both audiences, Newman said.
“There’s very much a punk rock edge, with a lot of power chords and driving rhythms,” he said. “Yet because it’s a Broadway show, people have to be able to hear the lyrics, so the biggest challenge is retaining the Green Day sound while appealing to a musical theater audience. Not everyone is going to like it, because it is unapologetic and political. The attitude is, ‘This is what we’re going to do and you’re going to like it.’ ”
Because there was already a story embedded into the album, the musical expands on that plot, where several teen-agers seek to escape the ennui and complacency of small-town, post-9/11 American life, with mixed results. The curtain rises to expose 30 television screens, blaring everything from cable news to “South Park” before the production launches into its opening number, featuring the familiar opening line, “I don’t want to be an American idiot.”
“It’s basically means not wanting to sit on the couch all day and letting other people tell you what to think,” Newman said.
Newman was 8 years old when “Dookie,” Green Day’s 1994 breakthrough album, was released. He said he stole his older brother’s copy.
“I loved it even though I didn’t understand what they were singing about,” he said.
Nevertheless, by the time Newman got around to purchasing the “American Idiot” album, he’d already both seen the musical and landed the job as musical director.
“When I got the job, I bought the album and the cast album and listened to it nonstop,” he said. “Even when I saw the musical, I was floored by the arrangements, as far as knowing when to stay close to the album and when to make a whole new world with the song.”
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