We Will Rock You

After months of publicity, the high-octane West End production of Ben Elton's We Will Rock You has finally rocked its way across the border, setting up for its two month Christmas session.

There are no musical instruments or guitar heroes in Elton’s future, only the approved and computer synthesised music of the Killer Queen’s worldwide enterprise, Globalsoft.

Uniformity rules until the appearance of young prophet named Galileo Figaro and fellow free spirit Scaramouche. The Bohemians, an underground resistance to Globalsoft, lead the quest to find “The Dreamer”, a rising star who will take the magical instrument and liberate the planet.

Some 24 Queen songs are tenuously stretched across an escapist storyline and strummed mercilessly. In a pantomime fashion most befitting the time of the year, the characters launch themselves headfirst into the songs. Sometimes this links well with the plot; sometimes it really does not.

The technical staging is worthy of a stadium rock tour in itself. A conquering assault on the senses, the music is cranked up to maximum volume and the audience is dazed by a flood of bright lights. The result is truly exhilarating and, as a result, every song is a torch song. With so much technical prowess behind it, the cast could sing three bars of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and it would still sound as epic as a night backstage at Wembley.

Brenda Edwards’ Killer Queen is a delicious meeting of everything that is worth relishing in a villain. Finding inspiration somewhere between the latter Aretha Franklin and Ursula the Sea Witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, she snarls through her show-stopping musical numbers.

Michael Falzon is a remarkably energetic performer, throwing himself on his knees throughout in a true rock fashion. He has a vocal style not entirely dissimilar to that of Freddie Mercury and his range suits the material well. By the grand finale, a near mega mix of all the crowd pleasers, he has the crowd cheering and calling for more.

Arlene Phillips’s slick yet complex choreography alludes to everything from the Moonwalk to the Mashed Potato whilst Tim Goodchild’s range of ingenious costumes mimic the fashion icons of music, from Sgt Pepper to Sid Vicious. Should Earth ever succumb to a dystopian, Mad Max existence, I daresay that the music stars of the day will wear Goodchild’s designs to The Brit Awards.

Amongst all of the script’s pseudo-mystical nonsense is Sarah French-Ellis’ Scaramouche, the dry and cynical love interest of Falzon's Galileo Figaro; armed with an arsenal of one liners delivered with an excellent sense of timing, she saves the show from its own sometimes corny storyline on many occasions. Belting huge riffs into the auditorium, she brings a new kind of magic to so many familiar Queen anthems.

We Will Rock You is by no stretch of the imagination the most sophisticated piece of theatre, but with its amplification of known and loved songs, its polished cast and high production values, it would be hard not to dance with your vacuum cleaner to the soundtrack.