Now this is awesomeness covered in awesome sauce

It's hard to believe that it's been five years since American Idiot came out and turned Green Day into a Clash-wannabe band performing songs about masturbation into the voice of disaffected young America in the Bush years. It may now be impossible to listen to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" ever again in the way it's impossible to ever listen to "Stairway to Heaven" again, but I don't think there's a song that better embodies the sheer rage most of us had at what was happening to our country in 2004 than "American Idiot":

And like a Penn and Teller magic trick, Billie Joe Armstrong went from punk prince in eyeliner, rock 'n' roll king to the high school set to singing duets with Elvis Costello:

I realize that theatre is usually ModFab's beat, but since he hasn't picked up on this one yet, I will. I don't know if American Idiot started out as a punk opera, but it ended up as one, so it was only a matter of time before someone got the idea to conceptualize Armstrong's magnum opus for the stage:

On Monday, the band announced plans to bring its multi-platinum and Grammy award-winning album, “American Idiot” to the stage in their Northern California hometown.

Green Day will collaborate with Michael Mayer, the renowned director of “Spring Awakening,” which won eight Tony Awards including best director and best musical in 2007. The new show — also titled “American Idiot” — will receive its world premiere in the band’s own backyard at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

“American Idiot,” which just wrapped it’s first workshop (aka its testing phase) in New York City, follows working-class characters from the suburbs to the city to the Middle East, as they seek redemption in a world filled with frustration, according to the band’s label, Reprise Records.

“We are really excited to be working with Michael Mayer on this project,” Green Day’s frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement to Access Hollywood. “We’d been thinking of bringing ‘American Idiot’ to the stage, but knew we needed to find the right partners. After meeting with Michael to discuss the possibility, he invited us to see ‘Spring Awakening.’ We were so impressed with that production, as well as his vision for ‘American Idiot,’ that we knew we’d found the perfect collaborator. Plus, doing it in our hometown at Berkeley Rep was an obvious bonus. They’re an amazing theatre group, very adventurous, and their willingness to take chances is in keeping with the spirit of the album. The end result will be terrific, and we’re really proud.”

It's a long way from a repertory company in Berkeley to Broadway, and I have a certain amount of skepticism as to how Jesus of Suburbia, Jimmy, and Whatshername are going to translate to the stage. There's a certain Bialystock and Bloom gonzo aura to the whole enterprise, but it seems that the band is serious about this and has brought in some heavy-duty talent with the credentials to pull it off. But with Broadway largely running on fumes, much-anticipated movie adaptations, TV and movie stars, revivals of shows we all performed in high school, the foul-mouthed puppets that have been having explicit puppet sex onstage since July 2003, and the 4,987th actress shrieking "Defying Gravity" from the rafters at the Gershwin, a stage adaptation of American Idiot might be quite the ticket on the Great White Way.

Howie Klein has more.