By guest reviewer – 12 year old Francesca Turton
On the 9th of August I went to see American Idiot at the Arts Theatre in London.
It was a musical play about the lives of three American teenage boys after 9/11 and how they feel they need to ‘do something’ and get out into the world.
Like ‘We Will Rock You’ built a story around Queen’s music, American idiot uses Green Day songs to create a story. The three boys, who were best friends, went on to lead totally different lives during the following year.
Some of the scenes concentrated on just one of the teenager’s life and sometimes it showed all three on different areas of the stage at the same time. This was very good because you could compare how they were living simultaneously.
There was a good mix of songs, from solo ballads, duets and whole cast rock numbers. Although my favourite Green Day song is still Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I particularly liked 21 Guns in the show as the 3 main girls sang it, including Amelia Lily (of X Factor fame). My mum loved Wake Me Up When September Ends.
One of the things I found interesting was the fact that the guitarists were on stage virtually all the time – and it was very funny when one of the main characters made reference to them.
For the final song, the three leads all sang and played acoustic guitar together which sounded really great, then as the song went on the whole cast joined in, also playing their guitars. I wonder how many of them played the guitar before they joined the show?
We didn’t buy a programme until after the show and were very surprised to see that we had been watching the understudies in some of the lead roles – we would never have known as they were absolutely brilliant. I even managed to get my photo taken with two of them as they left the theatre.
I enjoyed it greatly and would recommend it to anyone, especially Green Day fans, although there was a lot of swearing and adult themes in the show so I wouldn’t advise taking a young child to see it.
Full review at https://www.facebook.com/pages/TATT-Turton-at-the-Theatre/853875411371589