Review: American Idiot - Punk rock opera has the X Factor

Written in the wake of 9/11 as a concept album, Green Day’s punk-rock opera American Idiot charts the disillusionment and self destruction of small-town youth.

The cast of American Idiot

THE PLAYHOUSE, Greenside Place

* * * *

To be precise, the fall from grace of three bored, middle-class adolescents. Distrusting of society, government and authority they struggle to find their respective paths through life.

Enter anti-hero Johnny, the self-styled Jesus of Suburbia, and his mates Tunny and Will.

Keen to experience life in the big city, they are reduced to two in number when Will’s girlfriend Heather announces she is pregnant. He stays.

In the city, as dreams are shattered, Tunny escapes to the army as Johnny descends into an excess of sex and drugs with new found girlfriend Whatsername.

Throughout, ‘drug dealer’ St Jimmy is never far away.

With a blistering score played live by a tight four-piece band perched high above the action, the cast attack this sung-through piece with a relentless, frenetic energy.

Tom Milner proves a vulnerable Johnny who, with powerful vocals, delivers anthems such as Boulevard of Broken Dreams with assured poise. His characterisation, however, is need of stronger direction.

As his side-kicks, Joshua Dowen is a solid and reliable Tunny - he anchors each scene he appears in.

Samuel Pope, meanwhile, brings an easy normality to Will. Real and likeable, he is the perfect goofy foil for Siobhan O’Driscoll’s nicely confident Heather.

The casting of X Factor ‘stars’ in musical theatre can be hit or miss, and that is certainly true of this American Idiot.

Thankfully, Sam Lavery bucks the trend to give a feisty, dominant and always believable performance as Whatsername.

St Jimmy, however, a camp and overly melodramatic Luke Friend, lacks any real threat. Friend seems rather lost in the role.

Director/Choreographer Racky Plews ensures this strangely sanitised production (you’ll never see a cleaner junkie) rocks along at a pace, though often messy choreography distracts along the way, never more than in Before The Lobotomy in which panicking medical staff pointlessly run around the stage.

That said, when Milner, Dowen and Pope are on vocal duties together the songs soar and all eyes are on them.

Likewise, it’s Dowen and Lavery that shine in the song 21 Guns.

So, a mixed bag then, but a production still worth seeing just to experience Green Day’s musical odyssey, which retains the potential to be a modern classic.

Run ends 9 February