American Idiot follows the exhilarating journey of a new generation of young Americans as they struggle to find meaning in a post 9/11 world, borne along by Green Day’s electrifying score. This high-octane show includes every song from the acclaimed album American Idiot, as well as several songs from the band’s Grammy-nominated new release, 21st Century Breakdown.
Green Day won two Grammy Awards for the groundbreaking rock opera American Idiot, which sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Now Billie Joe Armstrong and the band collaborate with one of the theatre's most acclaimed creative teams, led by the Tony Award-winning director of Spring Awakening, Michael Mayer, two-time Tony Award-winning composer and orchestrator Tom Kitt, and Olivier Award-winning choreographer Steven Hoggett, to bring this explosive, iconic album to the stage.
Dramaturgy aside, "American Idiot" comes dressed in an exciting and impressive production. Mayer's set designer, Christine Jones, has contrived a monumental space flanked by towering postered walls incorporating 43 busily working video monitors. There is also a metal staircase to the stars, or the flies of the St. James, which is only half used by the director; the two upper landings are reserved for the violinist and the violist, who must get pretty lonely up there. Mayer and Jones have been joined by video designer Darrel Maloney and lighting designer Kevin Adams to create what might be termed a "really big show."
It’s a self-described “rock opera” set in a self-created “Recent Past,” and it purports to evoke, with a single tear and a power chord, the confusing days of the terror-stricken early 21st century, when we yo-yoed from cowed powerlessness to inchoate fury. Well, confusing and inchoate this show most definitely is: Its version of youthful anomie is so far off the mark, and such a muddled conflation of vague Gen-X nostalgia and generic rebellion sample tracks, that the effect is almost comical. But mostly just irritating.
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