American Idiot Musical Rocks

Could a Green Day musical be the best Broadway show of the season? It's possible. Critics agree that American Idiot looks and sounds spectacular—though some bemoan its thin plot. Here's what they're saying.

• It's “thrilling raucous and gorgeously wrought,” writes Charles Isherwood of the New York Times. This is unadorned punk, "a pulsating portrait of wasted youth” that's “as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I've seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons.”

• The musical could reinvigorate Broadway with its uncompromising, radio-ready rock, writes Jeremy McCarter of Newsweek, and the stagecraft is so spectacular that “the show doesn't just look different from other musicals—it's a different sensation to watch it.”
• It's a “visually dazzling package,” agrees Peter Marks of the Washington Post. But the story and characters just feel derivative. The show “skulks in the all-too-familiar dark corners of a disposable culture that kills initiative and stunts growth.”
• The show “delivers an impressive amount of terrific numbers,” says Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post, but it's so relentlessly intense that “you may feel more numbed than stirred.”