the craptacular

Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

• We interviewed Jonathan Groff this week. We interviewed Jonathan Groff this week. We interviewed Jonathan Groff this week. We interviewed Jonathan Groff this week. We interviewed Jonathan Groff this week. Audio (OH DEAR!!!!) coming soon. Special thanks to James Marino and Michael Portantiere for that insane/wonderful opportunity. In the meantime, feel free to listen to the two of us shoot our mouths off on other theater-y topics on James’s show, BroadwayRadio. Lately, for reasons that are not entirely clear to us, we’ve been selected to join the esteemed panel to chat about some shows, and some Tony nominations.
• Our favorite trend in Broadway charity auctions? Shoes. A sampling of fun auctions we’ve seen recently: Gavin Creel’s much-battered Claude boots from Hair (ends May 25), Tony Vincent’s drool-worthy/so-sad-they-don’t-fit-us-because-we’d-actually-wear-them St. Jimmy boots from American Idiot (ends May 25), and Billie Joe Armstrong’s never-worn-but-still-awesome St. Jimmy Creepers (ended May 16).
• Normally we prefer our Broadway live and onstage, thank you very much, but we make exceptions for certain projects, and certain handsome/awesome/big-singing actors. Behold, for example, the trailer for the new NBC show Smash about the rivalry between two Broadway stars, which is trying to be Glee for grownups, but we don’t even care because it looks awesome. Christian Borle on TV? Beside Brian Darcy James and Megan Hilty? A world in which that is a distinct possibility is one in which I can live very comfortably.
• Speaking of TV, and we don’t like to, but we were likewise intrigued by the trailer for the new CBS show, A Gifted Man, which stars The Hottest Person on Earth Patrick Wilson as a surgeon (LOL) who sees visions of his dead wife (Theaterperson Jennifer Ehle, most recently of The Coast of Utopia), and is wooing another medical-type person (Theaterperson Marin Ireland, of In the Wake). Not to credit Lea Michele and Matt Morrison with any major cultural shifting or anything, but we adore this new idea of The Wildy Famous and Well-Known Theaterperson. Any room in that Pantheon for Michael Esper and Johnny Gallagher, we wonder?
• See this? It’s a flashmob in Poland of people singing “One Day More” from Les Miserables. It’s totes calculated — it was set up to promote the show — but we don’t even care. Wait for the moment when Enjolras — the Justin Timberlake of classic French literature — starts singing and a bunch of little girls start screaming. Our thoughts exactly, gals. Our thoughts exactly.
• So the Independent Theater Bloggers Association gave their annual awards this week. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson took the Best Musical prize. Jerusalem won Best Play. Soooooo… Are we the only members who voted, or what?

So. You want to see The Book of Mormon. Like, right the fuck now. But you’re morally opposed to Premium tickets. Or broke. Or both.

Good news! A little research on the interweb tells you there is this thing called a “Ticket Lottery” for Mormon where a handful of highly coveted tickets are raffled off to a few lucky bastards prior to each performance. You could be one of those lucky bastards! You WILL be!

Except… if you’re not. And then what? Sure, you get entered in this newfangled Losers Lottery but… how does it all work? How does one handle the stress?

Never fear, dear reader, The Craptacular is here to get you up to speed on this whole messy process. Because when it comes to The Book of Mormon ticket lottery we’ve been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. Like, 12 times.

18 Steps to Losing the Book of Mormon Ticket Lottery

1. Arrive the very earliest instant possible to enter your name. Or roll up at the last moment. Or show up somewhere in the middle. Or…
2. Write your info on the card provided, then debate the merits of several possible folding methodologies while people huff and tap their feet loudly behind you. Throw card into the Big Golden Drum of Mormon Glory and attempt to wend your way out of the ever-growing crowd in search of oxygen.
3. Wait. (Impatiently.)
4. Huff/whine/make your companions hate you every time another wave of folks appears to try their luck and enter the lotto, too.
5. Suss out the competition. Repeatedly attempt to incorrectly estimate crowd size. Marvel at its demographic makeup—Straight men! Wealthy adults! Seriously old people!
6. Lotto begins. Debate whether or not you should fish your ID out of your poorly organized wallet and put it in your pocket. Is it best to be prepared in the event of victory? Will you jinx yourself completely? Miss the first name entirely.
7. Attempt to keep a constant tally of the number of names called. There are twenty highly coveted tickets—ten names if everyone wants pairs, more if you get some singles.
8. Hold your breath after each name is called. Pray winner has fallen off the face of the earth between the time they entered and the time their card was pulled from the Big Golden Drum of Mormon Glory.
9. Remember, karma is only a bitch if you are. Pretend to be happy when people celebrate their victory. Golf clap.
10. Do not irritate your companions any further by complaining when self-conscious, unenthusiastic, lame-ass winners who clearly didn’t want it bad enough refuse to celebrate their victory. Do not hiss “Fuck them!” or shout “You don’t deserve it!” Bite your tongue.
11. Debate whether or not you’d take the single ticket that’s left, abandoning your friends and risking their ire/jealousy/disdain.
12. Feel secretly disappointed when you don’t get the chance to ditch their asses and see the show solo because someone else has just won the final seat.
13. Leave, head down, cursing the Gods of Lotto because you’ve lost. Again. Again. Again.
14. Convince yourself it’s okay that you’re the only one of your friends who still hasn’t seen the hottest show on Broadway. You’re not mad.
15. Realize you’re lying to yourself. Again. Again. Again.
16. Head two blocks south to the Barrymore and try to snag a rush ticket to Arcadia so you can comfort yourself with Mathematics, Literature, and Tom Riley/Raul Esparza/Billy Crudup/Waltzing.
17. Rinse.
18. Repeat.

Sometimes, really hot musical theater actors decide to expand their horizons (or return to their roots) and drop the ‘musical’ part from the top of their resume. Today, we’re celebrating a handful of our favorites. The guys who left a musical for a straight play this season.

	Michael Esper When last we met Mr. Esper, he was starring as Will in American Idiot, a role which required him to do little more than schlump on a dirty old couch for 90 minutes. These days he’s stretching his dramatic muscles as Eli in Tony Kushner’s latest, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…, down at the Public. And ladies (or gents) you’ll be very happy to know he’s stretching more than just his dramatic muscles on that stage. In one particularly intense scene, Esper can be seen wearing nothing more than a pair of black briefs, and what an undercover hottie-with-a-body Mr. Esper proves himself to be. In fact, he’s so hot it’s a struggle to pay attention to the very serious scene he’s enacting. I mean, not that we’re complaining. That’s a struggle we’ll endure again and again.
	John Gallagher Jr. Another American Idiot ex-pat, Johnny Galls is currently plying his trade in the British play Jerusalem at the Music Box Theater (just one block north of his old home at the St. James). There he plays Lee, a dreamy teen with his heart set on travel, who sports shaggy hair and boxers poking out from the waistband of his skinny jeans—a look we love, despite being old enough to know better. Johnny may have taken a smaller, supporting role this time around, but we’re glad he’s still on the Broadway stage, so we have somewhere to go for our smart-sensitive-nerd-boy fix.
	Adam Chanler-Berat When we first saw Adam Chanler-Berat as the sweet, devoted boyfriend Henry in Next to Normal, we were instantly in love. We wanted a Henry of our own. Or an Adam of our own, for that matter. He just seems so darling. And a little goofy. And really, really cute. This spring, Mr. Chanler-Berat kept himself busy playing Peter Pan in Peter and the Starcatcher at the New York Theater Workshop. We’re sad to say we missed his performance in Starcatcher, but we’re hoping to see him again on Broadway soon. That is, if we can’t cuddle with him on a sunny spring day in Central Park, first.
	Raúl Esparza The classic. Mr. Esparza has been acting in plays for ever and ever, sliding in and out of his big-signing musical roles with ease. He was last seen in the new musical Leap of Faith in Los Angeles, but these days, Esparza is working it on stage at the Barrymore Theater in the Tony Nominated revival of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. As Valentine Coverly, Esparza is playing a swoony romantic who waxes poetic about math, and we like it. Now, we love Raúl in basically every single thing he does. But getting us all emotional about math? That takes real talent. And amazing hotness. Raúl has both in spades.
	Matt Doyle Every single time we see Matt Doyle—late of Bye Bye Birdie—we’re bowled over by how awesomely talented he is. And how hot he is. And the fact that, even when everyone and everything around him is a disaster, he always appears calm, confident, talented, and aware of what is going on. In control. We envy him that. Well, that and his big, beautiful eyes. Mr. Doyle is now in the cast of War Horse at Lincoln Center, where things are probably remarkably less disastrous than they were at Bye Bye Birdie. As if we weren’t excited to see Doyle again anyway, now we get to see him in a show worthy of his talent. Double swoon.

Photos: Joseph Marzullo, Gallagher Jr. & Chanler-Berat; Contactmusic.com, Esparza; Francis Hills, Esper.

1. He’s back on Glee. I mean, I know we said “besides,” but whatever.
2. He’s half-Mennonite. Sort of. We’re still fascinated and want to know more. Even after all these years. Even though we actually do know more.
3. He’s the cutest person you’ve ever seen, even though he’s not. But he is. You know what I mean?
4. He and Lea Michele had some weird shenanigans going on during Spring Awakening when they pretended to be fake in love with each other. Not that they aren’t actually in love with each other, because I think they actually are. But not in love in love. But it was kind of fascinating-yet-disturbing-yet-charming, and no one could have achieved that as artfully as Jonathan Groff.
5. We’ll wonder forever if he’s actually a horrible person on the inside. Because all of his characters are and it’s easy to extrapolate. And then we’ll wonder why we don’t care one way or the other.
6. Yeah, there’s six. To make up for the first one. At one point in time, he was technology averse and always had a marginally phone-like device on him that could not, under any circumstances, be categorized as a “smart” phone. Maybe he’s caught up by now. You know, hanging out in Los Angeles and all. But it was still really endearing. Really.

Anyway, here’s some more stuff to read about Jonathan Groff:

• Happy Valentine’s Day from The Craptacular (And Lea Michele)
• 8 Effing Awesome, Must-Endlessly-Rewatch Theater Videos
• Deathtrap: In Which Jonathan Groff Is Completely Hot, but Not Completely Awesome
• Who Is This Person Calling Himself Jonathan Groff, and Why Is He So Sexy?
• Oh, Now Jonathan Groff Is Too Gay? Seriously? Are We Even Having This Conversation?
• For Team Gallagher and Team Groff, a Truce
• In Which Jonathan Groff Finds Additional Employment in London
• On That Time Jonathan Groff Incapacitated Me in the Street
• Happy Birthday, Baby: Jonathan Groff Hits the Quarter Century
• The Hair Shirt: Which Former Melchior Wore It Best?

The biggest Broadway stars of tomorrow? Check ’em out today. And then act all smug about it when tomorrow actually gets here.

Jeanna de Waal
To see the Broadway stars of tomorrow, you need look no further than the cast of American Idiot. The seats at the St. James were barely cold and half of them had already gone on to high-profile gigs. One of our favorite talents to emerge is pretty Jeanna de Wall, who in addition to having a phonetically complex name, can sing like a crazyperson. In fact, her bangup harmonies with Billie Joe Armstrong were basically the musical highlight of the show. Plus, she brought big charisma to a small role and made us wonder what she could do with more stage time. (Our immediate suggestion: Song and Dance hasn’t been done in a while.) We hope to see lots more of her—if her native England doesn’t instantly snatch her back.

Jay Armstrong Johnson
We’re all just waiting for Aaron Tveit to call out sick, aren’t we. Don’t get us wrong. We love Aaron, but we’re itching to see his understudy go on as Frank Abagnale Jr. in Catch Me If You Can. With roles in Hair, an early reading of Newsies, and the lead in Barrington Stage Company’s Pool Boy, Jay has been on the fringes of marquee leading man status for a little while now. Our only hope? That there’s a role out there that’s cool enough for his big-singing talent.

Justin Levine
We’re going to go out on a limb here: Justin Levine, known mostly as the musical director of the criminally short-lived Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, will be the most important new theater composer of our times. Yeah, we said it. He’s already created a spate of musicals and musical-like projects. The glimpses we’ve caught of them so far—mostly after Ben Walker’s Find the Funny gigs, where Justin and his friends occasionally serve as the house band—are jaw-droppingly good. It won’t be long before we see his work produced in New York. And hey, if he wants to star, we’re sure there’s probably room in there somewhere for his angelic singing voice.

Carly Rose Sonenclar
Amidst all the aggressive suckage at Wonderland, there was a bright light. Young Carly Rose Sonenclar, who is 12, has a very big voice, and a very big stage presence for one so small. Holding her own with Broadway vets, and with unmerciful material, we couldn’t help but wonder if we were looking at a major star in the making. One thing’s for sure: She’s got the pipes. Her web site says she’s been singing since the age of two—not entirely show how that works—but we’re guessing she’s in this for the long haul. Fall 2016 revival of Spring Awakening? Anyone?

THE GOOD

The Scottsboro Boys
So, there is some justice in the world. With an astonishing 12 Tony nominations, the lightening rod Kander and Ebb musical The Scottsboro Boys proves that a show need not be open to garner accolades. And how happy are we for Joshua Henry and Forrest McClendon–two gripping performances that we thought would be overlooked in favor of sunnier, dumber fare. Score one for challenging theater, and musicals that aren’t lobotomized for the tourist throngs.

Jerusalem
Six nods for Jersualem feels like a big, resounding “Hell yes!” for smart drama that doesn’t pander to anyone.  Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook were particularly deserving, but in a play where the modern mythology of character mingles with the ancient mythology of place,  the scenic and lighting design nods were just as exciting.  I mean, sure, it’s possible the nominating committee was just afraid Rooster Byron would call the giants down to stomp on them, but we don’t really care.

Arcadia
In late April’s swirly muck of Other Awards Ceremonies and Tony Nomination Predictions No One Cares About, Arcadia kept getting snubbed.  And we were fucking indignant.  Because that play is beautiful, and this production is heart wrenching.  We’re so deeply glad it made the cut for the Tonys.  Now quick, everyone go see it! Repeatedly!

The Normal Heart
A political screed masquerading as a play? Bullshit, says the Tony Awards. And so do we. With five nominations, including one for the splendid John Benjamin Hickey, The Normal Heart finally has its chance to shine on Broadway. This steamroller of a play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic is basically perfect—and proves that Joel Grey had a lot more in him this season than just his half-baked performance in Anything Goes.

Nina Arianda
In an otherwise completely shit year for women on Broadway, the Lead Actress in a Play category actually has some great competition.  Our favorite? Without question, Nina Arianda’s standout performance as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday.  She was an absolute joy to behold, and despite being surrounded by some seriously notable actors, she leapt off the stage to grab hold of your heart.  That’s impressive, considering Jim Belushi has been famous like, longer than we’ve been alive.

THE BAD

Catch Me If You Can
I mean, seriously.  This show is terrible.  It’s boring, no one cares about the one-dimensional characters, and it’s built on a totally stupid conceit—a serious shame when you consider the source material.  And yet, it’s up for multiple awards?  And more egregiously, it’s up for Best Musical? How? It didn’t even qualify for Best Book or Best Score (or Direction, or Choreography, or, or, or).  AND IT SUCKS!  Wow.  Apparently all you need to do to get a Tony nod these days is adapt a movie for the stage. Take note, Alex Timbers.

So Much Sister Act
In fairness, we haven’t seen it. But a new musical based on a movie that was already sort of a musical in the first place? That got ripped a new one by almost every major critic? Stop it, Tony Awards. We see what you’re doing there. We know you want to promote THE BUSINESS OF BROADWAY worldwide, but we think that over-congratulating this alleged sucker isn’t going to help your cause any.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Trust us, we never thought we’d be saying this, but… where is Priscilla Queen of the Desert?  Honestly.  In a season where the likes of Catch Me If You Can and Sister Act are raking in the nominations, it’s sad to see Priscilla overlooked.  Sure.  It’s not smart, or groundbreaking.  But it achieves something on that stage, and in a much less painful way than say… Catch Me If You Can.

Donna Murphy and the Actresses This Year
Don’t get us wrong. We love Donna and her performance in the astonishingly bad People in the Picture is the single best thing about it. But that’s just it. Why are the men of Broadway getting all these cool/interesting/high-profile things to sing and dance about and the women are stuck with… whatever Beth Leavel is doing in Baby It’s You? We’re glad that talented women are being recognized—and Sutton Foster is a great example of an accomplished performance lining up with solid material—but we’re scratching our heads over why they’re not being offered better fare in the first place.

The Plan for Dealing with The MotherFucker With the Hat
So there’s a play with the word fuck in the title, and though we are clearly fans of this word, broadcast television is not. So there needed to be… well, a plan for how to deal with a Tony night potentially full of F-Bombs.  Apparently, that plan is just to skip the word entirely and call the play “The Mother With the Hat.”  Which a) sounds stupid and b) has presumably nothing to do with the actual content of the play.  Also. How much cooler would the Tonys (and Broadway) seem if CBS had been forced to bleep that word like, 800 times during the broadcast? (Maybe cool enough to attract one or two new young people this year, we’re guessing.)

Women On The Verge of… A Nomination?
Patti Lupone? OK, we’re laughing. Hard. David Yazbeck? For that lyrical extended metaphor about Madrid being like your mother… and the nipple… and… no. Just no. With songs that sounded like they were written with a gun to this otherwise accomplished composer’s head, we cannot figure out for the life or us where these nominations came from. Laura Benanti’s nomination makes sense, only because her performance was such a complete standout. But Patti we will never forgive. The lady is awesome, but the show, and that performance, was decidedly not.

THE SNUBBED

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
Three cheers for Arian Moayed’s well-deserved nomination, but this wonderful show is always the bridesmaid, isn’t it. Snubbed in the Best Play category and relegated mostly to those ever-exciting design categories, we thought this Iraq war drama would fare better. At the very least, we thought that Robin Williams would get a nod, if only because his back-and-forth pacing really made him look like… well… a tiger. But in a crowded year for actors, we guess that growing convincing facial hair isn’t really enough to sway the nominating committee.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!  We could probs write thousands of words about this enormous “Fuck You” from the Nominating Committee, but we’ll try to contain ourselves here.  No nods in any of the truly major categories? (Book and Scenic are like lemon juice on a wound, for fuck’s sake!)  BENJAMIN PLEASE FUCK ME WALKER IGNORED COMPLETEY?!  Way to remind the universe that you’re basically all wrinkly, out-of-touch, backward looking ninnies, Nominating Committee.  Broadway of the Future—where Spider-Man 4: This One Also Still Sucks rules the day and no one can afford to produce genuinely boundary-breaking theater—really thanks you.

Tom Riley
We’re happy Arcadia got a few nods.  And Billy Crudup is lovely.  Really.  But we’re honestly nominating him over Tom Riley? Like… real life?  Septimus Hodge is the sexpot upon which the whole play hinges, and Riley is giving an absolutely, panty-twistingly perfect performance.  His sensitive, sexy, smart Hodge is the absolute highlight of the show and it’s a shame to see him go unrecognized beside his more famous American counterparts.

Daniel Radcliffe
When it comes to the Tonys, Daniel Radcliffe just cannot win. Literally. Overlooked for his turn in Equus and now in How to Succeed…, it seems that no amount of voice lessons and tap classes could help Hollywood’s shining boy wizard. It’s a bit of a shame, considering how much effort went into the performance, and how well he actually manages to carry the show. Ah well. The show is still sold out, and there’s always next year–and a new revival of La Cage–around the corner.

Christopher J Hanke
Not like this was the most genius performance ever, and some people full-on hated it. But we were charmed by Hanke’s Bud Frump and thought he would get a nom. At least he looked happy and at ease up there—something we can’t exactly say for some people.

Aaron Tveit
Oh we so called this.  From the moment the curtain fell at the Neil Simon, we called it. It’s hard to say this is a shame, because Tveit’s performance in this thoroughly lackluster show is so deeply one-note that it is in no way deserving of a nod.  Still, some part of us feels badly for the kid.  Probably the part that loved him in Next to Normal—where his lack of a nomination was truly a snub—but possibly also the part that wants to get him in the sack.

Sometimes, a girl just wants to have fun.

This is, incidentally, a pretty apropos sentiment when entering the Cort Theater to see the revival of Born Yesterday currently playing there.  Not only because the production itself is fun, but because the absolutely stellar leading lady, Nina Arianda, appears to be bringing more than a little bit of Cyndi Lauper to the stage with her each night.

To be frank, Arianda’s breakthrough Broadway performance is the real reason to see this revival of Born Yesterday.  Her Billie Dawn, a zany mix of Lauper and vintage screen siren, is basically pitch-perfect.  As a daffy former chorus girl who isn’t the brightest crayon in the box she strikes a beautiful balance between outlandish caricature and sensitive portrait.  In the second act, as Dawn is educated by Paul Verall (played with a boring efficiency by Robert Sean Leonard), Arianda’s subtlety really shines.  She brings a fresh honesty to Dawn, so natural and innate that it feels real, a human decency that can’t simply be attributed to education.

Jim Belushi, as Billie Dawn’s junk tycoon boyfriend Harry Brock, is wonderful as well.  He makes the most of his physical presence, and his ability to slide between spoiled, demanding child and menacing, abusive brute is chilling.

Ultimately, what may have been shocking in 1946 reads as par-for-the-course in 2011.  No one is stunned to hear that business men and lobbyists buy senators, these days.  Born Yesterday is no longer ground-breaking theater by any stretch of the imagination.

But it is a damn good night out.  I gasped when the absolutely stunning set was revealed, marveled at Arianda’s beautiful costumes, laughed quite a lot and rooted for our unlikely heroine.  I had, well… fun.  And sometimes, that’s exactly what a girl needs from her theater.

So I’ve been mulling about how I’m going to talk to you, dear reader, about the play Jerusalem. Because you should see it. But you should see it for reasons that involve what’s between your ears and not what’s between your legs. Of course, our tendency here at The Craptacular is to conflate the two motivations on a pretty much regular basis—because that’s human, and frankly, a generally less boring way to see the world—and in this case, it’s no different, but the former thing is more important than the latter.

I have no real desire, however, to go all Ben Brantley on you here. You can read his review—a complete crazy rave, which we knew beforehand because he was sitting two rows in front of us when we saw it—elsewhere. Plus, I can’t write as well as he can, and he’s writing for your grandparents anyway. For you, too. To be sure. But I’d like to give you some more specific perspective.

So let’s get this out of the way, right off the bat: You should see this play because John Gallagher, Jr. is in it, and because you love him. Because he staggers across the stage for three hours, messy-haired and smoking pot, with his pants slipping off his hips, revealing the waistband of his American Eagle boxers, the word AMERICAN positioned, hilariously, right in the front. His English accent is a mess but his performance is just right. He plays Lee, a boy on the run from the culture that raised him. And he is not, by any stretch of the fangirl imagination, the star of this show.

Jerusalem is about that culture, and brace yourself, American, because this culture is not yours. Jerusalem is about England, about its literally storied past and modernized present, and about a guy who lives in the woods in a trailer. John Byron (Mark Rylance) spends most of his time drinking, doing drugs, and hanging out with the natty pack of teenagers who venture out to his trailer to party. They also come for the stories—and Byron tells lots. About giants, scrapes with the authorities, sexual escapades with The Spice Girls. He’s a kind of over-the-hill rockstar to them, living outside the law and flouting the local authorities, who are trying to boot him and his trailer—and his chickens; there are live ones on the stage—off the land to make way for a housing development.

Are you catching the drift here? Byron is the last true rebel in England—a character culled straight from the over-the-top stories that Byron himself likes to tell. There’s a lot more. The whole story is, no kidding, an allegory of St. George and the Dragon. And if literature makes your heart flutter the way that it does ours, you will find much to adore in Jerusalem—besides Lee’s boxers.

But the show is made by Mark Rylance’s performance. Somewhere between a limping Keith Richards and an ogre, Rylance hollers and swaggers across the stage, the undisputed king of all his mildly stoned, wayward subjects. And Byron’s stories, no matter how fantastical, are so convincingly and grippingly told. As the show itself builds to its intense conclusion, the trick at hand is so simple, and so deftly played: beautiful words spoken by a master storyteller.

And of course, Jerusalem holds a lot of appeal for those of us who can see shades of ourselves up on the stage somewhere—the sloshed party girl intent on oblivion, the runaway hellbent on seeing what else is out there in the world, the prom queen with the overprotective big brother. And it shows us that even the most modernized, iPhone-clutching person can access something really old, and really simple–the power of his or her own story. And sure, maybe that’s your grandmother’s play—although she might be grossed out by parts of it—but it’s undoubtedly yours, too.

Photo: Simon Annand

Last night the center of the earth and the end of the world converged on Broadway for the final time.  More than any show in recent memory, American Idiot got us talking.  For hours and hours on end we analyzed our feelings, the content, what it all meant.  We loved it deeply, faults and all, and even as its Broadway incarnation takes a final bow, we continue to talk about its place in the American Theater pantheon and what the future might bring (a movie? a tour?).  While we’re dreaming of the future, take a look back at the past:

• Idiot, Out; Hair, In (Again)
• Holy Crap, Billie Joe Armstrong: A Small Compendium of Stagedoor and Other Craziness
• Q&A: Caught in the Act With… Tony Vincent
• Happy Birthday Billie Joe Armstrong, Because You Are a God of Rock and Broadway
• Billie Joe, Meet Bernadette: How the Two Best Performances of 2009… Happened in 2010
• Billie Joe Armstrong Is St. Jimmy: How Is This Going to Work, Exactly
• The Last of the American Boys: American Idiot the Alleged Non-Future of Dudes
• When First I Met… Stark Sands
• OMG Stark Sands Spit On Me, Etc.
• Theo Stockman and the Epic Face
• And the Winner Isn’t… American Idiot
• Screaming at American Idiot and Other Stuff That’s Totally Allowed
• American Idiot Almost Gave Me an Aneurysm
• For Team Gallagher and Team Groff, a Truce
• Newsflash: The BJ in the Audience at American Idiot Last Night Wasn’t Billie Joe
• Why American Idiot Totally Sucked on the Grammys

PS. ST. JIMMY RULES!