Disaffected 20somethings let out their anti-establishment rage to a punk-pop soundtrack in Chance Theater’s electrifying summer staging of Green Day’s American Idiot.

Introduced to New York audiences back in 2010 as “The Groundbreaking Broadway Musical,” American Idiot broke ground indeed with its high-volume soundtrack, expletive-laced lyrics, and Fuck-The-Establishment attitude.

Based largely on Green Day’s 2004 concept album of the same name, American Idiot recounts A Year In The Life of three societally alienated best friends and does so almost entirely in songs (music by Green Day, lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong) strung together by “book” writers Armstrong and Michael Mayer.

The Green Day Musical introduces us to best buds Johnny (Jared Machado), Tunny (Eric Dobson), and Will (Christopher Diem), whose plans for an escape from the stifling constraints of suburbia circa 2004 pan out for only the first two, with Will opting not so willingly to stay behind with his pregnant girlfriend Heather (Angie Chavez).

Life in Metropolis proves too much for Tunny, who ends up enlisting in the Army and getting shipped off to desert combat interrupted by heroine-induced visions of an Extraordinary Girl (Kristin O’Connell).

Johnny, on the other hand, sticks it out in the big city with a young woman he calls Whatsername (Erika Mireya Cruz) and a devilish alter ego known only as St. Jimmy (Dagmar Marshall-Michelson).

With its punk rock score, nihilistic plot threads, and profusion of sex, drugs, and the F word, American Idiot makes its rock musical predecessor Rent seem relatively tame by comparison, yet it never lets us forget the humanity of its three heroes.

As for AI’s music score, Green Day’s melodies turn out to be so unexpectedly melodic and catchy under the pulsating drum beats and electric guitar licks that even those not accustomed to listening to contemporary rock may find themselves humming as they leave the theater.

Minus a traditional book, the virtually sung-through American Idiot would be little more than a succession of Green Day’s Greatest Hits were it not for the uniquely personal vision each new director brings to the show, making this that rarity among Broadway musicals, one whose every new incarnation differs, often radically, from those that have come before and those that will follow.

Director James Michael McHale stages his American Idiot as if its three antiheroes’ lives were being performed inside a punk rock club by ten of its angriest, angstiest denizens.

And since McHale has cut down the number of additional cast members from the Broadway original’s twelve to a mere three (Jack Aitken, Sophie Barajas, and Wyatt Hatfield), more than any of the six other American Idiots I’ve seen, this latest is a true ensemble piece in which an extraordinarily talented ten blur the lines between leads, featured players, and “chorus.”

That’s not to say we don’t get to experience Tunny’s Operation Desert Storm, Johnny’s descent into drugs, and Will’s dissatisfaction at an unasked-for life, but this time round their lives are part of a tapestry in which all ten players are pretty much equal.

Diem, Dobson, and Machado create three distinctively drawn best friends while singing and strumming like rock club pros, and Chavez, Cruz, and O’Connell stand out equally as the women in their lives.

Marshall-Michaelson is a diabolical force of nature as St. Jimmy and Aitken, dance captain Barajas, and Hatfield are given so much to do, they end up making almost as striking an impression as characters given names.

Choreographer Miguel Cardenas allows the musical’s ten triple-threats scarcely a moment’s rest in a series of dance sequences that capture teen rage and frustration through movement while all ten manage the seemingly impossible, belting out song after song under Gabrielle Maldonado’s expert music direction while dancing up a storm.

Kristin Campbell’s punky-grungy red-white-and-blue set and Bradley Allen Lock’s punky-grungy array of costumes have been spectacularly lit by Andrea Heilman (as have Kylie Baunbusch and Bebe Herrera’s multitude of props), with production designer Nick Santiago outdoing himself with a plethora of tv screens filled with views of the early 2000s through a drug-induced lens and a series of scene-setting images without which Johnny, Tunny, and Will’s journeys would be a whole lot tougher to follow.

 Sound designer Hunter Moody and FOH mixer Hannah Jepsen join forces to fill the house with a rock-club ready sound mix of vocals as the show’s live band (Jimmy Beall, Curtis Humphrey, Ryan Navales, and Jorge Zuniga) deliver the goods time and time again.

Cynthia C. Espinoza is stage manager. Peter W. Mitchell is associate lighting designer and Teddy Pagee is assistant scenic designer.

Like Hair, The Who’s Tommy, Jerry Springer: The Opera, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson before it, American Idiot carries on Chance Theater’s tradition of thrilling audiences with intimate Orange County stagings of youth-propelled musicals at their most provocative and defiant.

You’d have to be an American Idiot not to put the Chance’s latest on your must-see list this summer.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
July 23, 2022
Photos: Doug Catiller, Camryn Long

Tags: Chance Theater, Green Day, Orange County Theater Review