American Idiot: great music, shame about the show...

I saw American Idiot with some friends last weekend. We had great food, drinks and a catch up beforehand in Pearces, but I was sadly underwhelmed by the show. Now this might be entirely down to me lacking a musical theatre appreciation gene, because lots of the audience appeared to have a great time & even gave the cast a standing ovation (although the place was almost half empty). But I completely missed whatever the point was. The cast looked like children's TV presenters unconvincingly grunged up for the part. The only person with any stage presence turned out to be an evil drug pusher who got artfully shot in a surge of morals well before the end. The singer playing the main character's druggy girlfriend wasn't too bad either but she was largely wasted in wandering around almost naked and/or simulating sex with the main character. There was altogether an excess of trashy MTV sexuality - not least the pretty distasteful shortie nurse uniforms, unbuttoned to give a flash of buttock, in the M*A*S*H - er, Iraq - field hospital scene. Mind you, the squaddie invalid's harem-porn, totally inexplicable flying-dance-with-belly-dancer fantasy from his hospital trolley was hilarious. The plot was largely unintelligible to me (or maybe I'd just stopped paying attention), but was apparently teen-mag simplistic: what's better, hard drugs, joining the army, teenage pregnancy, or an office job? And the last scene with the mass guitar lesson was just weird, was dragged out at least 10 minutes after it should have ended, and nearly ruined Green Day's brilliant 'Time of my Life' for me for ever. But not quite. My completely unqualified advice is, go listen to the album again, but if you want musicals, stick with Mary Poppins.