With all the fervor surrounding the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's production of "American Idiot," it's easy to forget all the excitement that the Green Day album of the same name generated back in 2004. It was less concentrated-the production "American Idiot" set the Bay Area theater community aflame for weeks before its premiere-but nearly every teenager in the United States had some opinion of Green Day that year. For radio listeners, it was impossible to escape "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" or "Holiday," and every time the latter's opening chords rang out, it was harder not to think of President Bush and his war.

Even for a punk album, American Idiot was daring, and while many eventually revolted against its popularity, the work is a rare modern rock opera that has refused to disappear in time because the time it speaks about is not yet over. It is politically intense, confusing, hyperemotional and grandiose, and for that reason, it is still unforgettable.

Director Michael Mayer's stage adaptation of "American Idiot" is the same sort of thrill. The musical begins with politics: Recorded voices of what are presumably Fox News anchors and political talking heads slobber pro-American lines, while dozens of televisions, scattered around the walls of the stage, flash before protagonist Johnny (John Gallagher Jr.) and the cast launch into the song "American Idiot." A few songs later, Johnny's friend Tunny (Matt Caplan) enlists in the army, thanks to a persuasive military recruiter. But "American Idiot" buries politics in order to let the music dominate the production.

This decision to allow Green Day's songs to speak for themselves does emaciate the plot. Aside from a few monologues by Johnny, it is extremely barren, with songs from American Idiot and a few from this year's 21st Century Breakdown duct-taped together to create a very rough outline of a story. The three main characters-Johnny, Will and Tunny-begin the musical together, but they quickly go their separate ways. Tunny goes off to war, and not shockingly, you soon find him in a hospital; Johnny's other friend Will (Michael Esper) finds that his girl Heather (Mary Faber) has become pregnant during "Dearly Beloved," and his apathy toward the new child leads her to leave him. And Johnny himself? He follows the album's trajectory, creating a ghoulish, drug-dealing alter ego named St. Jimmy (Tony Vincent) to stimulate his pleasure sensors, which also get a good deal of action from Whatsername (Rebecca Naomi Jones).

Aside from the general, do-a-bit-of-everything cast, these characters are the driving force and emotional thrust of the play. Gallagher Jr. plays the slovenly Johnny with ease, slurring out his lines and cracking self-deprecating half-grins. His voiceless interactions with Jones stay in the realm of physical expression, which Gallagher Jr. excels at throughout the play as head bangs and thrashes his way across the stage. Esper and Caplan are slightly more peripheral, but their performances add to the dark aura. Esper's Will is so disinterested that he's almost catatonic, and Caplan's best moments come in the form of facial expressions of wide-eyed fright. But Tony Vincent's St. Jimmy truly hypnotizes. Adorned in gothic artillery and sporting tattoos on his right arm, Vincent skulks around, cackling and menacing his way about the stage. As an alter ego, he doesn't have any self-reflective monologues, but Vincent does better as the silent devil on Johnny's shoulder, slyly goading him into heroin use and taking his small performance time to deliver the line "My name is St. Jimmy, I'm a son of a gun" with a razor tone. It's nearly impossible to take your eyes off him.

All the actors give their best within a plot, which, however thin, needs to be there; while American Idiot the album didn't need any clear plot to be successful, theater is more demanding. But the story is just a formality. Rather than Green Day music set to a performance, the Berkeley Rep's "American Idiot" is a performance set to the music of Green Day. You don't hear "Wake Me Up When September Ends" because it fits the scene; you see a scene because "Wake Me Up When September Ends" is the eleventh track on American Idiot. The plot is rendered secondary here, but it hardly matters because "American Idiot" is just so excessive.

That's the greatest function of the musical: visual eye candy. Actors climb over staircases, tip over towers, play air guitar and convulse on couches. Nearly all of the musical is extreme in its physicality, which rarely fails to entertain. "American Idiot" is a music production for the Internet generation; it's short and wry, but most of all, it's passionate, fierce and uncompromising in its delivery. It's hardly nuanced-the musical doesn't take many breaths, and it feels like actors are always itching to bustle about. It's a ridiculous sight, watching grown men jump on furniture, but their intensity is strong enough that you're willing to go along with it.

Of course, not everyone will be satisfied with a makeshift story and nonstop action. When Johnny asks "Is this the end or the beginning?" near the conclusion of the piece, it's true that it is not exactly clear. Tunny comes back from war, Will's girl returns to him once more with his child and a new man, Johnny sheds his St. Jimmy skin, and nothing really has changed.

But the missing revelation is the point. "American Idiot" is certainly audacious, but it's more about desperation than it is about hope, which is appropriate for this decade and for a generation that saw the tragedy of 9/11, the birth of two wars and the current economic crisis. This is topical, glitzy theater, an immersive experience blown up to ridiculous proportions, and it's so involving that any qualms you feel will have to come after the performance. "American Idiot" might be a circle, but it manages to make going nowhere a thrill of its own.