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Left feeling not quite rocked
Glorious quartet: the feisty Scaramouche (Lauren Samuels), Galileo (MiG Ayesa), Brit (Rolan Bell) and Meat (Lucie Jones, dazzling) We Will Rock You Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield **** We Will
Rock You first
surfaced as a stagework in 2002, as a Musical tribute to the legendary,
unforgettable Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara), whose tragic death in
November 1991 made him an icon not just of the whole Rock revival, but
of that first generation poleaxed by AIDS, who could not possibly have
known better. The equally inimitable
Ben Elton (TV's Blackadder with Richard Curtis, plus The Young Ones,
Happy Families) had long thought of writing a piece about Mercury. When
it finally came about, with a premiere staged aptly at They were. But flawed as it is, this is in no way
a show to be lambasted. It boasts a spectacular, massively talented
8-man band (keyboardist Pablo Navarro leads), who bang on a can
sometimes too loudly for this voluminous venue, but then that's what
classic Rock is about; a cheerfully gifted cast who are often left
underdirected by Elton himself (some of this looks tired - maybe
choreographer Arlene Phillips should take over the whole); and hyped
visual effects and projections that alternate the dazzling with damp
squibs. The story is important: delayed by ten minutes of
introductory nothing, the identity of the rather sweetly pantomime
characters and the nature of their worthy quest get insufficiently spelt
out. The longing of ‘Galileo' (Miguel Ayres) and ‘Scaramouche'
(Lauren Samuels) – one wishes the names married somewhat better - is to
restore music, and especially Rock, to a world taken over by a 1984-like,
computer-led dictatorship (Globalsoft: dangerously near-actionable). The doughty pair effects this by linking up with
a nest of brave souls, who have burrowed away in an animal-like hideout
(Heartbreak House Hotel) where hopefully the evil Killer Queen (here,
Brenda Edwards, handsome and full-voiced yet somehow a bit vapid) and
factotum Commander Kashoggi (an impressively energetic Sean Kingsley, a
noted Valjean from Les Miserables) cannot find and persecute
them. Kingsley, megastar of Musical, rock/blues vocalist and Sugarland Slim front man, has a lousy script and is stupidly projected showing his miked side, but one knockout song, fabulous in voice and tone, ignites everything; whatever the text, he is magnetic performer when in full flow; a bit more straight theatre, of which he is well capable, and where he might well flower if the voice goes, might lift him up notches.
The sensational Britney (Rolan Bell) and his feisty companion Meat (Lucie Jones) It's two of these fugitives, Roland Bell (Britney) and Lucie Jones (Meat, though Meatloaf or Meatcleaver would do), who really wake up this show after its ponderous start. The Pantomime element – it's just the kind of thing Elton could have seen as a small boy at his local Catford playhouse – actually picks up here. Though Samuels emerges vividly later on, her pat cockney asides miles better than the feeble, failed crowd-pleasing cracks of the beginning, it's these two who electrify events. The real star is In a sense, from then We Will Rock You
doesn't look back. The chorus (or ensemble) bits are iffy, with nothing
to equal the stunningly precise androgynous writhings (‘ That dance alone, in magical white (Tim
Goodchild's costumes are one of the highs of this production), imitated
or recapitulated twice later on - at the start of and near the end of
Act II - was superb beyond words. But the leads came vocally into their
own, and Ayesha's Galileo, a no-hope Everyman wimp for most of the show
- nothing like the switched-on heartthrob of the glossily illustrated
£10 programme book - has one electrifying number, in which he knocks
everything for six: he can clearly do it when he wants to, or when the
galumphing script allows him. It's a tragedy that the band and electronics
spoil two key numbers – a Samuels-MiG Ayesa duet that is on the edge of
extremely touching; and the one magnetising slow number, in a show too
besotted with fast ones, which gets overborne with ritual blasting.
Doesn't contrast count for anything, when celebrating a musician who was
such a master of the art? A pity, for the voices here are arguably all
rather good. But they, and even the partially but not mainly guilty band
strummers, be they sextet, septet of octet, with their immensely subtle
individual talents and magical instrumental detail, deserve better than
to disappear amid an all-obliterating acoustic hash. All 25 numbers are by Freddie Mercury and his
Queen colleagues – and what numbers they, or most of them (there's one
patent musical dud), are Although some are ‘worked in' to the story in
an uneven or haphazard-seeming way, to hear them alone is quite a treat.
One of the most gripping is ‘These Are the Days
of Our Lives', first heard, poignantly, in spring and early winter 1991,
the year of Mercury's death, also the inspiration of Roger Taylor (who,
with Freddie's other fabulous colleague, guitarist, vocalist and now
60-plus Doctor of Astrophysics, Brian May, was closely involved in at
least mentoring the show's best aspect, the musical arrangements). ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives' was sung in No worries about limp direction in his case: his
life is a shamble anyway. Pop's strange, troglodyte-like existence
brings home the loss suffered by all except the cardboard baddies and
the mostly invisible Globalsoft: what it means (as Orwell saw) when art,
life and individuality are crushed out of you all in one. What a great Musical this might easily have been. Brian May's amazingly visceral title song, ‘We Will Rock You', one of many unchallengeable masterpieces in this shows, certainly hit the rafters and solar plexus alike. It was a pity, however, that even in the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody' encore, this all too apologetic, puzzlingly low-level effort came so near missing. Roderic Dunnett
Newcastle Metro Radio Arena Fri 7 – Sun 9 Jun;
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