American Idiot the Musical – Palace Theatre, Manchester and Touring

Lucas Rush and Matt Thorpe in American Idiot the Musical at the Palace Theatre, Manchester and Touring. Picture: Darren Bell

American Idiot the Musical continues at the Palace Theatre, Manchester until 9 April, then tours until 2 July.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Six years after it first rocketed onto Broadway, this high-octane punk rock opera still has the power to turn heads and assault the senses.

On the surface, the music of US punk band Green Day isn’t the most obvious starting point for a large scale, sung-through musical. But, with 13 of its 22 songs drawn from Green Day’s multi-platinum selling 2004 album of the same name, this is no mere jukebox musical.

That record, now hailed as a 21st century classic, was a concept album in the finest tradition of The Who’s Tommy or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, with a loosely strung narrative concerning an angry and disillusioned teenager – the Jesus of Suburbia – navigating his way through post-9/11 middle America.

Conceived by Michael Mayer, hot off the back of his work on the similarly tumultuous Spring Awakening, the stage version fleshes out the characters suggested by the lyrics of Green Day songsmith Billie Joe Armstrong into the story of three male friends pulled into very different paths.

Any new production stands and falls on the casting of this central trio, and it is here where this second UK tour – which retains much of the cast of last year’s well-received West End run at the Arts Theatre – excels.

Matt Thorpe gives his troubled ringleader Johnny a sinewy physicality, with his descent into drug addiction viscerally portrayed. His mostly dialogue-free depiction of the toll heroin takes on the body in the build-up to the heartfelt ‘When It’s Time’ is a physical masterclass.

Steve Rushton gives well-meaning but feckless new father Will a real sweetness and Cellen Chugg Jones (standing in for Alexis Gerred) copes manfully with the demands of playing invalided GI Tunny. His performance of the hallucinatory ‘Extraordinary Girl’ with Alice Stokoe as his nurse in shining armour kicks the Act II into a top gear that is sustained right through to its end.

The rest of the ensemble has considerably less to do, but Lucas Rush tears into his role as the embodiment of Johnny’s dark side, St Jimmy, with gusto and displays considerable vocal prowess on ‘Last Night On Earth’, as does X Factor finalist Amelia Lily, also reprising her West End role, who attacks her moment in the spotlight – when it finally comes with the incendiary ‘Letterbomb’ – with considerable skill.

Much is made of the political themes contained in Armstrong’s songs, but in truth only two songs are overtly political – the rabble-rousing titular opener ‘American Idiot’ and ‘Holiday’ – although the latter, despite its references to protestors and napalm, is used rather more literally to soundtrack a bus trip to the city.

But then Armstrong’s songs are better when unflinchingly documenting the alienation, frustration and general malaise of youth (captured best in Thorpe’s ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ and Thorpe, Chugg Jones and Rushton’s mostly acoustic performance of ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’), with their focus on the personal rather than the geopolitical.

Musically, there are riffs and hooks to die for, as Green Day’s greatest songs occupy a sweet spot between the heft of England’s own punk troubadours The Clash and the soaring, widescreen Americana of vintage Springsteen. Which is a good job as it’s the songs that do almost all of the narrative heavy lifting.

Each new production seems to pare back the already spare dialogue further, and a result the action sometimes becomes hard to follow. But director/choreographer Racky Plews keeps a strong handle on the more chaotic scenes, with multiple tableaus occurring all at once.

The onstage – or, in some cases, just offstage – musicians Robert Wicks, Alex Marchisone, Tommaso Varvello and Nick Kent provide a wall of sound that is hard to resist, even if the sometimes muddy sound in this venue makes some of the wordier lyrical content indecipherable – a shame when the words in question are so good.

But these niggles are forgotten in the show’s more cohesive second half, when the cumulative effect is a musical that draws you in so fully that you really do feel transported to another place during its lean and mean 115-minute running time.

Chris Bartlett

www.americanidiotthemusical.co.uk