‘American Idiot,’ featuring music of Green Day, opening run at Smith Center

The Broadway musical version of Green Day's "American Idiot" album comes to Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center.

"I feel the human experience of the show has been amplified," says director Michael Mayer in describing the current version of the musical "American Idiot."

Michael Mayer says "American Idiot" could bring in new audiences.

Once upon a time, Broadway music was popular music — and vice versa.

Think Frank Sinatra swinging “Luck Be a Lady” from “Guys and Dolls.” Judy Collins crooning “A Little Night Music’s” plaintive “Send in the Clowns.” Or the Cowsills, Three Dog Night and the Fifth Dimension scoring a “Hair” trifecta with the title song, “Easy to Be Hard” and “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In,” respectively.

Next, flash forward more than a few decades and think Green Day and “American Idiot.”

Yes, it can still be done — as demonstrated by the Broadway musical built around the punk rock group’s platinum-selling album of the same name, which launches an eight-performance run Tuesday at The Smith Center.

Unlike jukebox musicals created to showcase collections of unrelated hits, “American Idiot” dramatizes a concept album: one that painted a portrait of alienated post-9/11 American youths through such songs as “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Jesus of Suburbia,” “21 Guns” and “Wake Me Up Before September Ends.”

And for director Michael Mayer (whose credits stretch from “Thoroughly Modern Millie” to TV’s “Smash”), “American Idiot” represents a second chance to prove “you could do a serious-minded” musical “with the kind of music that people would listen to happily on the radio.”

He first explored that notion with 2006’s “Spring Awakening,” which explored Victorian-era teen angst — and teen sexuality.

It captured eight Tony Awards, including one for best musical, one for Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s score — and one for Mayer’s direction.

“Spring Awakening” also convinced Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong that “American Idiot” could be a Broadway musical.

Just not “something old-fashioned,” Mayer says.

When Armstrong came to see “Spring Awakening,” the director recalls, “it was so not his grandparents’ idea of Broadway.”

Yet after seeing the show, “which he loved,” Armstrong and Mayer “spent all night at one of those theater restaurants, talking and bonding,” the director says in a telephone interview. Armstrong “was very engaged by the idea of it.”

When the “American Idiot” album debuted in 2004 with a theatrical-sounding “Green Day Presents,” suggesting “the concept of it being something like a theatrical production,” Mayer says, “I don’t think they ever took it that seriously.”

But Mayer did, sensing “a narrative in the album — if you listen to it enough,” as the director did, responding to “the political agenda of the album and the emotional journey” of its central trio: Johnny (played by Alex Nee), Will (Casey O’Farrell ) and Tunny (Thomas Hettrick ).

To say nothing of the characters they encounter on that emotional journey, from the streetwise St. Jimmy (Trent Saunders ) to rebel girl Whatshername (Alyssa DiPalma ).

The show’s foundation “happens to be lyrics, rather than spoken words, but it is like a play,” Mayer says. “It plays with form a lot — and preconceived notions of what dramatic action is.”

In that sense, Mayer considers “American Idiot” as “the first opera I did.” (The second: a recent Vegas-themed “Rigoletto” for New York’s Metropolitan Opera, which played movie theaters nationwide as part of the Met’s high-definition broadcast series.)

After all, “there’s almost no talking” in “American Idiot,” he says. “Most of the dialogue is sung. And the storytelling is done on the music and through the music.”

Creating a narrative for that music proved “challenging, but not difficult,” Mayer admits. “I have to tell you, it went really smoothly.”

In part, that’s because the show “never went down the wrong path,” forcing its creators to alter their initial approach. (Unlike “Spring Awakening,” the director says.)

“It was a lot of work — but very joyous,” Mayer describes “American Idiot’s” path from workshop to Broadway. And beyond.

Although the current touring version’s “footprint is a little bit smaller,” the director says, the show “is very similar in terms of the staging” to its predecessors.

Except that it might be “slightly more user-friendly,” Mayer says.

In part, that’s due to a design switch — to “a smaller black wall” as a backdrop to the action, instead of the “big white wall” featured in the Broadway production.

“It’s like the photo negative of the Broadway version,” he says. “The room is dark, not light, and it’s not quite so tall.”

As a result, “I feel the human experience of the show has been amplified,” Mayer says. “The people are bigger in relation to the space — and I feel like the audience can climb in.”

Not that it’s a cozy show in any case.

It’s “true to the spirit of the record,” Mayer says. “It’s an aggressive production and an aggressive album.”

As to whether “American Idiot” should even be a Broadway show, Mayer finds that question — and the people asking it — “deeply annoying to me,” he says.

“I always thought theater — and the lively arts in general — were innately progressive,” Mayer says. “For anyone to say what is theater, or what is Broadway — that kind of thinking is antithetical to the art form itself.”

Besides, a show like “American Idiot” might even bring new audiences, and new creators, to Broadway, he says.

“Green Day has a massive fan base,” but most of them aren’t “the theater-going audience,” Mayer acknowledges.

However, “I imagine a few of them will be bitten by the bug.”

In the meantime, Mayer hopes the show “will continue to encourage really great songwriters, whose idiom hasn’t been connected to narrative, that it’s a very cool way for them to start expressing themselves,” he says. “It’s such a thrilling medium.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.