Shuffling out of the Comedy Theatre following the Melbourne premiere of the Green Day jukebox musical American Idiot, it wasn't punk rock angst or post-show excitement I was feeling. It was sheer, slack-jawed confusion.
This is a show that has won two Tony Awards and a Grammy. It's a show that has played all over the world, including on Broadway and in the West End, and has picked up two Helpmann nods and a slew of enthusiastic reviews during its Brisbane season just last year.
So how could it be such an utter failure on so many levels?
It should be noted that this Melbourne debut had not been without its challenges. The show's lead, Linden Furnell, was sacked for "inappropriate behaviour" just days before opening, replaced at short notice by Ben Bennett, who starred in the Australian premiere season in Queensland. But the roots of this production's many problems go far deeper than a casting crisis.
And so, yet more confusion. The album from which the show takes both its title and musical content should be a breeze to adapt. Following the fun, flippant, fuck you spirit of the punk-pop pioneers' first albums, 2004's American Idiot represented a shift in Green Day's creative motivations. Young, dumb feel-good songs with catchy tunes and hormonal lyrics gave way to a protest forged in the disenfranchised fires of a post 9/11 America. Railing against the second President Bush and his terror-making, war-mongering administration, this concept "rock opera" album represented a bold statement from a mainstream outfit attempting to channel their influence into a rebellious political philosophy.
So in theory, Green Day should have already done all the heavy lifting a decade and a half ago, with an album ready-made with a dramatic blueprint. But any stage work, whether it's a punk singalong or a Greek epic, needs to have an engaging narrative, and American Idiot's stage iteration fails to cobble together even the most basic of plots, let alone relatable or even remotely likeable characters.
At its core are three gnarly, dirtbag dudes (we know this because they're wearing ripped jeans and have sweaty hair) who hope to run away to the city to become big-time rock stars. With their bus tickets procured, they're ready to flip the bird to their dreary suburban lives.
The first to have his dreams dashed is Will (Alex Jones) whose girlfriend falls pregnant, saddling him with a pesky kid. Even after they make it to the big smoke, stardom is too elusive for Tunny (Connor Crawford) who spontaneously decides to enlist in the army and ships out to insert-generic-Middle-Eastern-warzone-here. The sole remaining wannabe is Johnny (Ben Bennett), who is wooed by inner demons he dubs St Jimmy (Phil Jamieson) into serious drug addiction.
As for narrative exposition, the audience are mostly left to figure things out from a blunt mixture of pantomimic stage business and a steady stream of distracting projections. The sole context for the musical numbers - so poorly amplified the lyrics are largely obliterated - are spoken entries from Johnny's tortured journal; a maddening scattershot of jittery, disaffected cliches that do little - or more accurately, nothing - to move the story along.
But if these angst-riddled rambles do reveal anything, it's the essence of this production's greatest flaw - the lack of any authenticity or nuance. Every dance sequence is like a mosh pit humping a Bobby Fosse chorus line. Every female character is drawn like a one-dimensional strip club temptress, little more than sexual props. The three principle ladies have even less substance than their respective leading men. There's a pretty, petite Heather (Ashleigh Taylor), whose either pregnant or unhappy. There's the culturally offensive Arabian nurse-cum-belly dancer "Extraordinary Girl" (Kaylah Attard), who gets flown across stage during a cheesy AF fever dream scene that has all the finesse of cruise ship magic show. And then there's druggy nympho Whatsername (Phoebe Panaretos) - yes, that's right, she doesn't even get a name.
In an attempt to reboot the political inspiration behind the music, President Trump bumps Bush as the story's authoritarian boogieman, but this only acts to further distance this show from the ambition behind the score. Green Day's album was responding to a very specific chapter in America's political history. Trying to shoehorn it into a present, where the concerns and anxieties of a new coming of age generation are worlds away from those Green Day were targetting, seems at best opportunistic and at worst just plain ignorant.
Vocally, the cast is undeniably talented, with the female leads bringing more to the proceedings than the gents. The chorus commits to every head banging, air guitar-ing cue with evident ability and dynamism, and credit should be paid to their skill. And the Green Day faithful will no doubt get a kick out of hearing their favourite songs accompanied by a pumped-up spectacle. Helming the production, Ben Bennett makes a valiant fist of it, but as the central anchor he seems to lack both the dramatic credibility and vocal props to steady this bumpy ride of a show. Jamieson lifts the evening as much as he can, bringing some genuine punk swagger and musical flair to his stage time. But it's not enough to compensate for the faults he's surrounded by — a one-note and drama-lite production that's often little more than polished karaoke.
American Idiot plays at the Comedy Theatre until 11 Mar
