Based on music made famous by Queen. Book by Ben Elton.
It took me a while to decide to go and see We Will Rock You. Apart from Christina's involvement, and the thrill of seeing Bohemian Rhapsody performed on stage, there was little to recommend it. Ben Elton had pretty much admitted there was no substance in his book, and there were bound to be many songs that just didn't work. In the end, all my reasons for not going turned out to be valid, but I'm still glad I went.
The plot is basically centered around a search in the future for the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody, and the instruments that were used to play it, banned from use by a corporation that controls all music. The main characters are a boy who hears the lyrics to songs in his head, and calls himself Galileo Figaro. He meets up with a rebellious girl he calls Scaramouche. They fall in with a group of Bohemians, let by Brit and Oz. They are named after Britney Spears and Ozzy Osbourne, but of course they got the genders wrong.
There were a lot of good, yet very silly jokes throughout the book. Many had obviously been written especially for Australia, where Ben Elton has spent a lot of time, having married a local. The songs were of course mostly very good and in most cases their new contexts worked reasonably well. I believe however it was a mistake to include little bits of songs, such as Flash, used to represent a form of electrocution, and Don't Stop Me Now, cut tragically short before it got going.
The choreography was a disappointment. I don't doubt the technical difficulty, but it was mostly confined to the good guys simplistic jumping about, and the bad guys robotic movements, which after a while became monotonous. The appeal of the show was in the characters.
The first time I saw the show, Kate Hoolihan was in her role of Scaramouche, who often sees things from the audience's perspective, frequently saying how weird things are. Kate did a fantastic job making the character lovable and was vocally flawless. Matt Lee as Galileo was wonderful. He seemed to be buzzed to be covering the role for Michael Falzon, but it seemed to work for the character. To be honest, I was glad of the swap, given that I knew who Matt Lee was, but I had to look up Falzon.
I went back to the show to see Christina Tan as Scaramouche, and as an added bonus got to see the real Galileo, Michael Falzon. In his early, stuttering stage, Michael sort of overplayed the stuttering in a way, but as this aspect of the character goes away, it became less distracting later. Michael's singing was certainly up to scratch.
Annie Crummer and Ross Girven played the bad guys. They did well enough, but I found myself always wanting to know what was going on with the good guys. I don't think the bad guys were likable enough. I think this is based more on the writing than the performances, as it was pretty much the same the second time when Damien Aylward played Khashoggi. On the other hand, Jason Chong as Brit and Amanda Harrison as Oz, were both a lot of fun.
Christina Tan's chorus characters didn't have much to say. Her good guy character did have a name; she was Madonna, despite being listed as Madge in the program. In bad guy scenes the costumes made her indistinguishable from the other females. When she played Scaramouche she was a wonder. Her characterization was remarkably similar to Kate Hoolihan's, but being different people, slightly different quirks did come through. Christina's vocal work was beautiful to my untrained ear, and I believe was perfectly in the Queen spirit, in a way only matched by Amanda Harrison as Oz.
We Will Rock You used a lot of animation on screens to tell the story. While it was mostly used well, it was occasionally distracting the first time, in a similar way that Scaramouche's outfit was distracting the second time. Quite apart from blaming the concept of moving images in stage musicals, I think it has a lot of potential. I'd like to think the money will be there to develop this idea further. The imagination could run wild.
We Will Rock You
Michael Coppel, Queen Theatrical, Phil McIntyre and Tribeca Theatrical
7th August 2003 - Current
Regent Theatre
Review of Wednesday 26th November 2003 (Evening)
From Dress Circle A 36 (Christina as Ensemble/Madonna)
& Wednesday 14th January 2004 (Matinee)
From Stalls GG 20 (Christina as Scaramouche)
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