Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Tom Milner, Luke Friend, Sam Lavery, Alexandra Robinson, Christian Tyler Wood, Daniel Law, Glen Adamson, Jennifer Caldwell, Joshua Dowen, Laura Marie Benson, Lucas Rush, Raquel Jones, Rory McGuire, Ross William Wild, Samuel Pope, Shekinah McFarlane, Siobhan O’ Driscoll, Amy Anzel, David Brooks.
Band: Robert Wicks, Chris George, Nick Kent, Charlie Maguire.
Whether or not the current administration in the United States of America believes it or not, they have arguably created a situation in which caricature is the least of their problems, mockery a pastime in which the daily social media exercises of its Commander in Chief are relished and in which the situation for many of young has become one of isolation, rage, and a sense of hopelessness. It is not though however a new sense of bleakness thrust upon the American youth, it is arguably one that has been manipulated since the start of the flourishing beginning of The Counter Culture and the dichotomy that divided the Flower Power movement and the fear that Vietnam could escalate, that the Cold War could heat up to a point of terminal destruction.
Every generation has been defined by the events they live through, but perhaps for Generation X and their progressive nihilistic outlook driven by the rage and sorrow expanded upon in the Ginsberg opus Howl, and for the children of the Millennial tag, the 2004 Green Day album American Idiot is a firm grasp of what it means to have had so much hope for the future taken away, to see Presidents, once a behind the scenes virtue, now reduced to ridicule, the landscape scared and desecrated in the search for the all holy American Dollar, cities torn apart, families scattered.
Through the auspicious eyes of theatre company Selladoor, Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer’s Rock Opera, American Idiot, expands on that sense of alienation, drug addiction, despair, fear, isolation and dissention with more than accuracy, it can be seen as a warning that distancing of responsibility by all Governments, not just the current incumbents of the White House, is the road to which dreams are not just broken, they are set on fire, the resulting blaze seen across time, and it is a heart-breaking situation.
Through the eyes of group of friends, and arguably some of the finest songs of Green Day’s career, American Idiot is not just a Rock Opera, it is a dissection of our own hostility, the expectation we have placed on the young since the end of World War Two, one that is framed with Johnny’s use of hard drugs, the pressure of serving one’s country in a war many thought we had no right to be involved in and through the collapse of home-inspired values.
With tremendous choreography, excellent and poignant songs, including the phenomenal Jesus of Suburbia, Give Me Novacaine, Last Of The American Girls/She’s A Rebel, Know Your Enemy and 21 Guns, American Idiot is perhaps the musical for our time, the division and dread of growing up in a world that doesn’t care, that sends out virtue signalling but actually is only out for what it can get, is rampant. We can talk all we want about inclusivity, we hear the words of togetherness, but they are empty rhetoric, echoes of words that in the end, mean nothing at all.
In the words of Green Day, “We are the desperate in the decline”, the last chance to put things right and American Idiot acknowledges that superbly.
Ian D. Hall