Who said musicals can't have Mohawks, black nail varnish and ripped fishnets? Definitely not the cast from Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ musical.

This brash and rebellious show sticks one middle finger up to the classical conventions we would expect from musical theatre.

At the heart of this punk rock musical are American band Green Day’s cult classics, which take you back to your teenage years of wearing converse and far too much dark eyeliner.

In between numbers such as: ‘Wake me up when September Ends’, ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, the three leads, Johnny, Tunny and Will break free from claustrophobic suburbia as they head to the big city.

But with most jukebox musicals I was skeptical this would be a string of songs held tenuously together by a weak story.

My fears were realised when the three leads went their separate ways, one into fatherhood, one into the army and the other was left taking a multitude of drugs and trying to woo the girl of his dreams.

We were never given the opportunity to really see how these choices and paths the protagonists took affected them, I felt almost estranged from them, particularly Will, played by Steve Rushton, whose fatherhood story seemed almost like an after thought.

Maybe the intention was to let the music do all the talking, but if I wanted that I would have just gone to see a Green Day concert or listened to their songs

For a “ground breaking” musical there was a complete lack of strong female characters in this show.

It’s not at all groundbreaking to have a nurse, pregnant girlfriend and a girl called ‘Whatsername’ as the main female leads.

Despite a lack of characterisation and identity, the performers were vocally superb and had the attitude, which could have seen them as the next member of the band.

Alexis Gerred as Tunny gave a powerful rendition of Green Day’s ‘Give Me Novacaine’ as he struggles with his life altering injury after serving in the army.

The ensemble was full of energy and enthusiasm, stealing the spotlight from the leading men as they embraced the show’s outlandish streak.

Sets nowadays are an integral part of the show and this was no exception, the grimy graffiti sprayed across the set was synonymous with the underground world the cast found themselves in.

Slightly less imaginative was the choreography, by Racky Plews, with head banging making up the majority of routines in between middle fingers to the audience.

Obviously the routines needs to be aggressive, rebellious and outrageous but having the ensemble act out an air guitar every five minutes is not something angsty teens will be practicing in their bedrooms.

And if you’re going to throw sex, drugs and punk rock in our face all night, don’t get the whole cast out playing guitars serenading the audience ‘Good Riddance (Time of your life)’, at the end of the performance, it ruins the whole “I don’t care” attitude.

This was a musical that tried desperately to be innovative and break conventions, which it did to some degree, but it wasn’t the shocking, ground breaking show we had been promised.

Perhaps Green Day could take a leaf out of Shakespeare’s books – he’s been doing ‘shocking’ for the past 400 years.

3/5