BWW:UK On Broadway: Part 3

I've decided that this week should frankly have been declared a global holiday in my honour - not only do we have the Tonys on Broadway, but the World Cup has started. It's a double-whammy of extravaganzas of excellence and I really don't know what I'm more excited about at this moment in time.

So the World Cup kicked off yesterday, and after a lovely breakfast at the Hilton New York with their highly efficient director of communications Mark Ricci, I headed "downtown" to meet up with a mob of English expats (and one American looking a bit confused, albeit eager to embrace this "football") to watch South Africa v Mexico; and after a bit of shopping, we reconvened to watch Uruguay v France.

But the evening is theatre time. I had my first experience of tkts today, queuing for entry to American Idiot. (I had also wanted to catch My Trip Down The Pink Carpet, but that'll have to wait now until its imminent London transfer - I'm told it's hilarious and I'm very much looking forward to it.) You'll probably know American Idiot is based on the Green Day concept album, and it stars Tony winner John H Gallagher Jnr in the central role, working once more with his Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer.

If you know Spring Awakening at all, you'll keep being reminded of it here - the lighting caught my eye first of all, but also the stylisation of movement and choreography. More importantly, this cast also oozes just as much energy as its Spring Awakening counterparts (kudos to the leads, Gallagher, Stark Sands and Michael Esper for maintaining that). It's also got echoes of Rent - Whatsername is Mimi Marquez transplanted into a different place and time, and our (anti-)hero even writes his smacked-up lover a song as she lies comatose, then later sells his guitar in order to fund his journey home. And of course there's the shared subtext of teenage rebellion, though the youth of American Idiot are rather more explicitly angry at nothing in particular than the angst-ridden bohemians of Rent.

Good performances all round, and a particular hat-tip to Tony Vincent, who excels here with the rock vocals he's previously demonstrated in London with We Will Rock You. And though American Idiot may seem on the surface to be similar to that Queen jukebox musical, rest assured that as an entire piece of theatrical work, Green Day and their collaborators have trumped Messrs May, Taylor and Elton altogether.

 

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