Green Day Gets Stage Debut with American Idiot???

US rock band Green Day have written a musical due to hit Broadway later this year. The show, named after and based on the band’s 2004 album American Idiot, will open at the Berkeley Repetory Theater in September. And although no official announcement has been made, a West End transfer looks likely should it prove a stateside hit.

Green Day, fronted by vocalist-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, are a multi-platinum selling band whose punk style seems an unlikely fit for the musical stage. But the new musical is directed by none other than Michael Mayer, who recently helmed eight-time Tony winner Spring Awakening and knows a thing or two about the box office potential for alt-rock musicals. Mayer told the New York Times that he came up with the idea whilst in rehearsals for Spring: “(American Idiot) was very much in my head all that time. Sometimes I really would say things like ‘Why can’t this have a groove like Boulevard of Broken Dreams’.”

So could American Idiot follow in the footsteps of Spring Awakening and cross the channel? Well, Green Day’s huge UK following can’t do its chances any harm, nor can the fact that Brit Steven Hoggett, a recent Olivier award winner for his work on the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, is attached as choreographer.