Last night, we attended Green Day's American Idiot at the Oriental Theater in Chicago. Before I get in to my deep thoughts about Billy Joe's foray in to musical theater or my opinions about how this musical/rock opera/whatever you want to call it stacks up with some of the other musicals I have seen, I need to share a few pre-show observations.
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| What crowd do you expect with a cast like this? |
A musical based on a Green Day album draws the strangest collection of people I think I've ever seen. There were grown up punks who you could tell have moved on from their hard-living, but their faces and tight jeans tell where they've been. There were the stodgy old theater goers that probably have "season tickets" and likely wanted to throw up 15 minutes in. There was the middle-aged gay couple with the leather pants - not tight leather, loose "Van Halen-leather" in Natalie's words. There was a group of teenage girls whose parents must have dropped them off, screaming intellectual things like "You're hot!" at the lead (when we saw them before the show Natalie asked if they got lost on their way to The Vow). There was fat Harry Potter wearing shorts and a tshirt on a 30 degree night in Chicago, fashion-challenged Dorothy who needed to click the heels of her ruby slippers and return home to find some clothes that matched, and my personal favorite - the girl with the Green Day t-shirt.
I'm sure we've all heard the unwritten rule regarding wearing a Green Day shirt to a Green Day concert (or Counting Crows to Counting Crows, or whatever band to their own show) - but this girl must have needed an update to the rules for this situation. My personal opinion is - not only is the tshirt a little too dressed down for the theater, but you can't wear the band t-shirt to the rock opera based on their album. Though the next time I seen Mamma Mia, I might have to find an Abba shirt at Goodwill and blow some people's minds.
If you've gotten this far, I give you a choice - there will probably be spoilers in the coming paragraphs, so if you plan to see American Idiot at some point and want to be surprised, stop reading.
