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josephine-lane
29th October 2012

Wake me up when the musical ends

Josephine Lane reviews the UK premiere of American Idiot, performed at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton on October 9th
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TLDR

One Star out of Five Stars

I’m becoming more and more aware these days, that anything, and I mean anything, can be adapted into musical interpretation.  The Spice Girls songs, Shrek and even Legally Blonde are now apparently the perfect thing to adapt into stage musicals, literally anything! Anything that is, except the Green Day album: American Idiot.

Okay, so perhaps the songs could be adapted into a fantastic musical. The fact that American Idiot is a concept rock-opera album (who knew?) should make it one of the easiest tasks in history. The failing of this such adaptation however, was that is only added about twenty lines of dialogue to the entire thing.

Oh yeah, there was a story somewhere in there too. It followed, ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ or Johnny, as he leaves his dull suburban life for the big city, develops an alter-ego (who I thought was his new best friend – the alter-ego thing was conveyed terribly) , falls in love, shoots heroin and then decides its all too much for him and goes back home.

The real failing of the show was its lack of context, clarity and dialogue: all amounting to the story feeling somewhat rushed. In the first scene, Johnny and his friends sit down to drink and discuss how shit their lives are, three lines later and they’re off on ‘Holiday’.  How and why their lives were shit, we never really found out. There was an entire sub-plot involving one of his friends and their pregnant girlfriend. She was basically present throughout the entire show, sitting on a sofa and moaning about the trouble with teenage pregnancy (well not really, but she should have been). We never even found out her name. Speaking of which, the character ‘Whatsername’ literally appeared out of nowhere, and our Johnny was in love. And yes, I know that in musicals relationships are established in seconds, but this character was given no context or introduction, and had no lines.

Putting my theatrical snobbery aside for a moment, I will say that the show was not a total failure. High-budget spectacles are scarcely boring. I have to admit my jaw did drop in amazement when the curtain went up and I was greeted with about 30 television screens, each with identical global news montages  (whether this had anything to do with the themes in the story is questionable), the rock show-style lights totally blinded the audience and the whole thing made quite an impact. The show was visually great, particularly the dancing. I can’t say the singing blew me away though, and it didn’t really deviate from the way it was sung on the album. The combination of this, the lights and the presence of the musicians onstage made the whole thing feel like more of a rock show than a musical. Now I love a gig as much as the next person, and I don’t really mind Green Day that much, but this made me feel rather annoyed throughout.

I recommend the show with caution: go if you are a big Green Day fan, if not, avoid it like the plague.

American Idiot: The Musical is from the  12th to 24th November at the Palace Theatre

 


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