Green Day’s award-winning punk-rock musical exploded onto the UK scene in October 2012 at The Mayflower, just a spit away from this new production at The Stage Door.

Based on the successful album of the same name, lead-singer Billy Joe Armstrong’s songs and subsequent collaboration with writer Michael Mayer paint a painful picture of suburban-America that touched a nerve with its’ disillusioned youth.

A case of music for the disenfranchised masses in the aftermath of Nine-Eleven. Co-directors Sam Quested and Adam Myers’s staging makes 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 title-track, the place is rocking and you can almost smell, well, teen-spirit. Perry Meadowcroft stars as mixed-up 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 drug-fuelled 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 stand-out performances among a vibrant, all-singing, all-dancing cast.

This was billed as Preview Night, but anything that didn’t work wasn’t noticeable and you’d be an Idiot to miss this! Runs until May 22.

BY ALAN JOHNS