We Will Rock You a tribute to great music and wild idea of freedom

IT MAY be a jukebox musical celebrating the music of 1970s pop rockers Queen, but We Will Rock You delivers pretty much exactly what it promises. And that’s a bunch of Queen songs carrying along what is a funny, cheeky, and occasionally insightful sci-fi pantomime.

Jazz Flowers (left) with Thern Reynolds, Gareth Keegan and Erin Clare in We Will Rock You The Musical which does exactly what it says on the tin.

IT MAY be a jukebox musical celebrating the music of 1970s pop rockers Queen, but We Will Rock You delivers pretty much exactly what it promises. And that’s a bunch of Queen songs carrying along what is a funny, cheeky, and occasionally insightful sci-fi pantomime.

Written and directed by Ben Elton, with surviving Queen members Brian May and Roger Talor supervising the musical content, the show premiered in London in 2002 and played until 2014. Last seen here in 2004, a new production opened at the Sydney Lyric Theatre at The Star casino last night.

Gareth Keegan and Erin Clare play Galileo Figaro and Scaramouche respectively.

The story unfolds in a future Earth known as the iPlanet, where government, culture and consumption have been unified and homogenised in the worst possible way. Globalsoft rules it all, issuing computer-created and approved music to the whole population and atop this hideous hierarchy sits the video game AI come-to-life known as the Killer Queen (Casey Donovan).

But there’s a group of Bohemian rebels who believe a legend that a guitar still exists somewhere in the world and one day a chosen one will find it and free them all. As our story begins, a lad called Galileo Figaro (Gareth Keegan) has been imprisoned because of the strange lyrics he’s reciting. When he and a girl he names Scaramouche (Erin Clare) escape, they head out on an epic journey to find freedom.

Casey Donovan plays the Killer Queen. Picture: John Grainger

Elton’s script is full of song references and knowing winks to and implicit criticisms of various cultural trends, and this one has been updated to acknowledge the rise of reality TV talent comps, Facebook Twitter and social media generally, as well as the current crop of pop stars, such as Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and their various claims to fame. There are some great local references to the likes of The Wiggles, John Farnham and — with former lead singer Brian Mannix in the cast — 1980s rockers Uncanny X-Men. Solid laughs pepper it all, many of the better lines echoing Elton’s TV comedy writing in the likes of shows The Young Ones and Black Adder.

We Will Rock You The Musical will be loved especially by fans of the band.

While the leads look great, Keegan’s voice isn’t strong enough to carry the big numbers, although Clare seems to have a better time of it. The pair really shine in the gentle duet Who Wants To Live Forever (originally penned for the movie Highlander) but the crowd-pleasers are Jaz Flowers and Thern Reynolds as Oz and Britney, the two Bohemians wondering the Mad Max-like wasteland, who get some great gags and make the most of them. And resident reality TV talent show graduate (how meta is that?) Donovan appropriately kills it as the Killer Queen in what is only her second stage musical outing.

The musical includes nearly two dozen of the bands greatest hits.

Almost two dozen songs are peppered throughout, including the likes of I Want It All, A Kind Of Magic, Under Pressure, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Fat Bottomed Girls and many other familiar tracks, including the title song and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody.

Great art it is not, but it is great entertainment and it does have a few thoughtful points to make about our contemporary culture as it delivers the laughs. Queen fans will love it.

The full cast rock it out.