The news that Green Day are bringing their Revolution Radio Tour to Sydney in 2017 has been followed by the announcement that their Broadway hit American Idiot will get an Australian premiere in… Brisbane! Opening in February 2017 at QPAC, the production will feature an Australian cast (TBA) directed by Craig Ilott, the guy behind alt-cabaret show Velvet, the Spiegeltent show Smoke and Mirrors, and the Australian production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
“It’s so rare to come across a piece as rich, stimulating and challenging as this," Ilott says of the show. "Ultimately it’s a rallying cry from the heart by one of the world's best bands.”
Premiering in 2009 and transferring to Broadway the following year, American Idiot is a vision of post-911 American dystopia penned by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), with music from Green Day's Grammy Award-winning 2004 album of the same name, and 2009 follow-up 21st Century Breakdown. The story follows three teens, two of whom leave the 'burbs to find themselves while one remains.
In their 4-star review of the 2010 Broadway debut, Time Out New York wrote:
Rage courses through the Green Day-scored American Idiot and fittingly, this andrenalized gut-punch of a musical is bound to piss you off. Whether you're a Broadway nostalgist longing for middle-of-the-road kitsch, or a sullen teen who vicariously thrills to the show's grimacing, bird-flipping punks, your heart will pound, your pupils will dilate, you will sweat and breathe hard. Such a state is intense but not permanent: Anger is just a drug, after all. But for the 90 minutes that American Idiot has you in its white-knuckle grasp, it will electrify and overwhelm your senses. Here's a musical to thrash to. Goodbye, orchestra pit; hello, mosh pit.
Find out where and when you can see Green Day's Revolution Radio tour in Sydney. And see what other musicals are coming to Sydney.