GREEN Day’s award-winning punk-rock musical, based on the successful album of the same name, sees co-directors Sam Quested and Adam Myers’s staging making full use of the venue, with the cast perching on every available ledge of the atmospherically dressed and lit set.
To the background of musical director Christopher Ball’s driving band, impressively augmented by a string-quartet, choreographer Nicola Cosshall’s high-energy dance routines perfectly complemented the head-banging music.
Kicking off with the album titletrack, the place is rocking and you can almost smell, well, teen-spirit. Perry Meadowcroft stars as mixedup Johnny, showing he can sing softly and tunefully as well as scream.
My favourite moments came when he sat and accompanied himself on guitar to deliver Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Wake Me Up When September Comes.
Andrew Diplock (Tunny) and Liam Baker (Will) were both very well-cast as his partners in grime and the scenes charting the friends’ conscription into the army and the effect that conflict had on them was graphically illustrated.
The arrival of drug-dealer St Jimmy is the catalyst to, particularly, Johnny’s drugfuelled spiral and Chris Edwards’ performance rivals that of Meadowcroft’s here.
It’s not all about the guys though, and Ellie Routledge (Whatsername), Sarah Bayliss (Heather) and Katie Tonkinson (Extraordinary Girl) are just three standout performances among a vibrant, all-singing, all-dancing cast.
Alan Johns
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