We Will Rock You at the London Coliseum: we will rob you, more like
We will rob you, more like. This insultingly slapdash musical by Ben Elton and Queen is possibly the most cynical piece of entertainment I’ve ever seen. The pomp-rockers’ impressive greatest hits are hammered willy-nilly into a nonsensical futuristic plot. The onstage band is ok, but that’s a low bar. There are two singing styles: loud and louder, both equally unclear.
The choreography recalls an aerobics video, the mostly projected sets are vestigial, and the costumes appalling. The acting is OTT and full of pre-emptive, knowing nods to the crappiness of the whole enterprise. All this in a show that purports to be about rebellion and “the kids” taking back creativity from a corporate, sanitised culture. My irony glands exploded two hours into the three-hour running time. Is English National Opera seriously being booted out of the Coliseum for the likes of this?
Anyway, in the near future a company called Globalsoft – run by BDSM cosplayers Killer Queen (Brenda Edwards) and Khashoggi (Lee Mead) – has banned live music and feeds the populace pap through their phones. Which is the cue for a sketchily reworded version of Radio Gaga.
Jittery nerd Galileo Figaro (Ian McIntosh) appears, speaking mostly in song lyrics beamed into his brain from the ether, to fulfill the tattered NME saviour myth of a rebel group called the Bohemians. He meets a sullen, sardonic fellow misfit (Elena Skye) who he dubs Scaramouche. “Everyone will call me ‘Scary Bush’!” she complains. Ha, bloody ha.
This mix of gormless dystopia, cliché and snickering puerility meanders on. Elton not only directs, imperceptibly, but also plays Bohemian leader Pop, badly. Great songs – Under Pressure, One Vision and Don’t Stop Me Now – are slotted in with decreasing relevance and increasing levels of cruise-ship-entertainment incoherence.
Last night, guitarist Brian May joined the cast for the inevitable encore, Bohemian Rhapsody, cranking out some arthritic solos. His back catalogue with Queen, and Elton’s across multiple media, are estimable. And they’ve tapped a lucrative vein here: WWRY ran for 12 years after it first opened at the Dominion in 2002 and is booked at the Coliseum for 12 weeks. But it’s a lazy, exploitative piece of work.
London Coliseum, August 27; londoncoliseum.org
