![]() But in Rodeo, Calif., north of Berkeley, he showed such talent that his parents signed him up for voice lessons in elementary school. “You feel a bit vulnerable to what your fans are going to think.”īillie Joe Armstrong grew up way off-Broadway. How actual Green Day fans will react is a mystery that makes even Armstrong nervous. James Theatre than there has ever been on any Broadway show to date,” Hucle says. “I can tell you that there is more sound equipment in the St. The “orchestra” is a real rock band (plus some strings here and there). The cast hurtles through a 90-minute, no-intermission yowl of alienation, war wounds and heroin abuse. And then there were these people with gray hair and walkers, and they were going, ‘I guess this is about some rock band’s album.’”Īt the Berkeley show, a bucket of earplugs stood at the door, just in case.īut will the fast fury of the pop-punk power trio translate to a theater charging up to $177 a ticket? And even if it does, will MTV-bred fans be convinced to dig into their chained-to-the-belt-loop wallets to spend the equivalent of five years’ worth of vintage T-shirt purchases on just two seats? Many of the songs from the stage version of “Idiot” are just as revved-up as the tracks from the boisterous album. There, Armstrong recalls, the crowd was “these kids with colored hair and issues. ![]() We all grew up on rock.”Īs it preps for its April 20 opening night, “American Idiot,” a story loosely built around an angst-ridden teen called Jesus of Suburbia, strives to improve upon the small-scale success of its initial run in Berkeley last year. “And everyone in the room is 40, 50, 60 years old. “We keep having conversations related to that,” says Hulce. As “American Idiot” began its first previews last week, across West 44th Street you could almost hear the Phantom of the Opera boom, “Who rattled my chandelier?”Įven in Broadway’s priciest seats, there are few left who came of age swooning to Sinatra in the pre-Elvis big band era. Yet the solution to Broadway’s chronic candyassery may be at hand. From 1968’s “Hair” (pop) to 1971’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” (soft rock) and “Grease” (sock-hop pop) to 1987’s “Phantom of the Opera” (please) to 1993’s “Tommy” (rock-ish), Broadway has never shaken the image of Mister Rogers wielding a Stratocaster. To rock Broadway is a goal akin to cleaning up Washington - worthy, and always just about to happen. ![]() It’s not a less-good category, but I found ‘Rent’ to be theater rock.” “My hesitation is that there’s a category of rock music that I find to be show-rock. “Um, I really enjoyed ‘Rent,’” he says, finally. Producer Tom Hulce - in another life, the Oscar-nominated Wolfie of “Amadeus” - issues a theatrical pause when asked for his take on the East Village version of “La Boheme.” “Rent” played for 12 years, swept the Tonys, captured the Pulitzer. At Tuesday’s final sound check for what sounds like an oxymoron - the Green Day musical, “American Idiot,” based on the band’s Grammy-winning 2004 rock opera - Armstrong offers generous thanks and a blessing to the cast and crew at this newly formed punk cathedral.īut the unspoken prayer to the rock gods is: Please don’t let this thing be the next “Rent.” James Theatre amid monster banks of TV monitors that glower and blink between stripped-down steel stairways. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong takes the stage at the St.
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