BALTIMORE, May 13, 2013-In many ways, Green Day's "American Idiot," which wrapped up its stay in Baltimore over the weekend, is like a cold slap in the audience's face delivering, as it does, a biting, visceral commentary on this era's teens and the secular, aimless environment they grow up in, courtesy of an increasingly disinterested parental class.
Centered around the rock group's deeply personal songs and their coldly sober lyrics, the 90-minute long show follows several teenage characters as they live out their seemingly stunted dreams and vivid nightmares in today's emotionless, homogenized suburbia. The show opens with three boys 'hanging out' at one of their houses, largely doing nothing. The lead character tells us he hasn't showered recently and, what about it, really. He needs his guitar and his computer and his musical accouterments, but so what? After a bit he and a buddy run away to the big city where the hero finds love, or is it just sex? After that, the cast spins into other musical examinations of societal benchmarks, including 9/11, racism, feminism, perceived racism and feminism, and so on.
Alex Nee, still at student at Northwestern, is the lead character, and he and his cast mates put on a breathless, churning show without an intermission. Walking out after the show, more than a few in the packed house remarked on how physically fit the entire cast had to be, since there were no rest periods for any of them. And the Saturday night show, which I watched from the back row of the most distant section, was the second one the cast performed that day. Others in the lead cast included Thomas Hettrick, Casey O'Farrell, Alyssa DiPalma, Jenna Ruball and Kennedy Caughell. There were many others.
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