Girlfriend Is Better
Let’s just get this out of the way at the outset. It’s inevitable that Berkeley Rep’s latest world premiere, Girlfriend, is going to be compared to the one that opened the theater’s season: the Green Day pop-punk opera American Idiot, which opened on Broadway this week to enthusiastic reviews. They’re both new rock musicals based on iconic albums, but while the huge spectacle of American Idiot uses all the songs in order without dialogue and leaves you to glean a vague story between the lyrics and the way the propulsive songs are staged, the much more intimate Girlfriend doesn’t bring some perceived implicit story on Matthew Sweet’s best-known album to life. It’s just the achingly sweet, funny love story of two boys fresh out of high school.
