Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
by Queen and Ben Elton, directed by Ben Elton
Mirvish Productions, Canon Theatre, Toronto
April 10, 2007-June 28, 2009
"Another One Bites the Dust”
People who contemplate seeing “We Will Rock You” should know what they are getting into. If your goal is to see a cover band give a high-energy concert of 29 songs by Queen and could care less about plot or characters, then this is the show for you. If, however, you go to the show because you like musicals that tell a coherent story via song and dance, then you will probably be disappointed. While Queen’s songs are inherently theatrical, Ben Elton’s book is unbelievably bad and an unfit vehicle for the music.
I am not against the show because it is a compilation musical. (New York critics like to use the derogatory term “jukebox musical” for a musical based on a compilation of a group’s or songwriter’s back catalogue; that’s is, it was derogatory until the 2006 Tony Award for Best Musical went to the homegrown compilation musical “Jersey Boys”.) Readers of Stage Door will know that I praised the ABBA-based musical “Mamma Mia!” But what made “Mamma Mia!” so delightful is exactly what is missing from “We Will Rock You”. Catherine Johnson’s book for “Mamma Mia!” is a masterpiece of its kind in integrating pre-existing songs into a story that they helped to move forward. In fact, Johnson had a knack for making the songs seem to grow from the story and thus involved the audience in the plot. When it came time for the main character Donna to decide whether or not to marry, people would become so wrapped up in the action they even called out “Yes!”
Ben Elton’s book is entirely different. The action is set 300 years in the future on an Earth so dominated by capitalism that it is called Planet Mall. This being a dystopian future, only one company GolbalSoft runs the world with the Killer Queen at its head. Through Radio Ga Ga the company manufactures anodyne music and only this is available for download on the internet. Needless to say, there is no rock music on Radio Ga Ga since GlobalSoft fears it might lead to a spirit of rebellion. In fact, GlobalSoft has become so tyrannical that its has banned all musical instruments. So far this scenario seems inspired by Queen’s early dislike of synthesizers signalled by the phrase "no synthesizers were used on this record" on their albums, though by 1980 they, too, began to use them.
There still are misfits in this brutally controlled but bland world. Such are our hero Galileo Figaro, who keeps hearing bits of old rock music in his head, and the would-be goth girl whom he names Scaramouche. They escape to join rebels living on the outskirts of cities called Bohemians. Once the Bohemians realize that Galileo already knows the sacred texts (i.e. rock lyrics) that he could never have seen, they acclaim him as the hero was prophesied to save the world by discovering the location of an electric guitar and bringing back rock music.
That Elton fetishizes the electric guitar reveals what nonsense his plot is. He seems never to have seen a show like “Stomp” which demonstrates that vibrant music can be made from virtually any ordinary material that comes to hand. Formal musical instruments are not necessary. Besides that, what about the human voice? Elton realizes this flaw enough to make a joke disdaining a capella music which, for totally unknown reasons, all the Bohemians dislike. Well, they’d have to to make his plot work. And even then, as shows like “Gumboots” or “Riverdance” show, people are quite capable of communicating a rebellious spirit through tapping, stamping and clapping.
Elton does show us a home-made stringed instrument but only in order to make fun of it. The fact that the Bohemians have not developed instruments from their surroundings or music through voice and dance, makes them seem incredibly dim-witted. Elton only enhances this notion by having the Galileo and the Bohemians constantly refer to inane song lyrics like “Who Let the Dogs Out” and wondering what their sacred meaning is. In fact, Elton emphasizes that the Bohemians really have no clue what it is that they revere since they each have chosen names for themselves that are singularly inappropriate. A girl calls herself Ozzy Osbourne (Meat Loaf in the original) and a kickboxing black guy calls himself Britney Spears. Elton probably does this just for the sake of laughs, but the result is that we can’t possible care about the hero and his quest if both are made to look stupid.
Even more fundamental is the simple fact that all the music sung is by Queen. Thus, even though GlobalSoft has banned rock music all we hear throughout the show is rock music. Even the villains, the Killer Queen and her henchman Khashoggi are characterized by songs by Queen. If this were a musical that seriously was attempting to portray two different groups of people, those in control versus the rebels, whose foremost characteristic is difference in music, the creators certainly would not use the same style of music for both. Besides, this, it’s fairly ridiculous to hear the characters complain about their need to find the sacred music so they can sing when they have just finished singing it. All this suggests at the very least that “We Will Rock You” needs an entirely different book, at least one that does not fall into self-contradiction at every turn.
The story, of course, is simply an excuse to string songs together by Queen, to disguise what is essentially a concert as a musical. Even the production itself reinforces this notion. Mark Fisher’s set puts metal scaffolding hung with lights and surmounted with guys manning spotlights in front of the proscenium at the Canon Theatre echoed by similar scaffolding on stage. The Canon is not deficient in lighting instruments. Fisher is deliberately trying to make the set look like that of a rock concert not a musical. For most of the show you would not ever know there was a live band because instead of being in a pit they are placed on a raised platform at the back of the stage behind a screen that effectively cuts the depth of the playing area on stage in half. This means that most of the singers and actors in this narrow space face front when delivering their lines or songs, again bolstering the impression of the show as a concert not a musical. Similarly, Willie Williams’s lighting seldom creates mood on stage but rather rolls into full manic rock concert mode with every song. Video by Mark Fisher and Williams, though well done, is used so extensively that the show frequently threatens to become a live-action movie.
As director, Ben Elton encourages an acting style that resembles television sketch comedy that at no time draws you into the story. At least the cast can sing. I saw Danny Balkwill, who alternates with Yvan Pedneault as Galileo. He has a certain boyish charm and shows believable confusion at hearing voices. His voice is strong and smooth but does not have the odd wobble that Freddie Mercury’s voice had that seemed to communicate vulnerability and toughness at the same time. Evan Buliung plays Khashoggi as the cartoon character he is. Sterling Jarvis and Jesse Robb display lots of vitality as Britney and Burton. Jack Langedijk’s aged hippie Pop is embarrassingly overdone.
Among the women, Erica Peck is a perky smart-ass Scaramouche with a great rock singer voice, but you do wish she could find some variation in her one-note tough-girl routine. Alana Bridgewater is far more comic than threatening as an overblown Killer Queen and outdoes everyone in the mugging department. She does, however, have a powerful voice. Suzie McNeil is a real find as Oz and one wishes her character had more to do. She sings “No One But You” with the real feeling lacking in so much of the show.
Despite the nonsensical story, the songs do have a power of their own. The two emotional highlights are the two quietest songs, “No One But You (Only The Good Die Young)” in Act 1 and “Who Wants To Live Forever” in Act 2. In the first Oz sings to the assembled Bohemians while images of rock singers who died young, including Mercury, create a black-and-white montage behind her. The second Galileo sings to Scaramouche after they have made love and we finally get a glimpse of how Queen’s music could have been used to evoke character rather than caricature.
Partway through Act 2, Elton abandons the plot altogether. The show explicitly becomes the rock concert it covertly had been all along with “Bohemian Rhapsody” performed as an oratorio directly to the audience. In the end you will admire the cast’s singing and dancing abilities, but you may very well wonder how former Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor could ever consider Ben Elton’s execrable book a suitable vehicle for their songs or as a tribute to Freddie Mercury. Elton claims that rock music is all about a boy expressing his rage with a guitar in his garage. In fact, the show pretty much represents the emasculation of rock music through commercialization that it pretends to decry.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Erica Peck, Yvan Pedneault and Jack Langedijk. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2007-05-25
We Will Rock You