“American Idiot,” the 2010 Broadway hit musical — the first punk rock opera, really — now at the Hippodrome, paints a searing portrait of restless, reckless youth, with all the sex, drugs and violence you’d expect from a disaffected generation.
That the show also manages to be entertaining and exhilarating just bumps up the cool factor, which is already considerable, given that the music is by the popular band Green Day and drawn from the 2004 album “American Idiot.”
Front man Billie Joe Armstrong collaborated on the book with Maryland native Michael Mayer, who directs the production with the same dynamic touch he brought to another hit musical about young angst, “Spring Awakening.”
