Review: WE WILL ROCK YOU, Theatre Royal, Glasgow
We Will Rock You is a futuristic musical that takes place on the planet that was once known as Earth. Music is only produced digitally and instruments have been banned. Globalsoft is a huge corporation churning out clones known as Gaga Girls who are built to never question authority.
Ian McIntosh plays Galileo, a young man who dreams of lyrics and the idea of rock and roll. Entitled, whiny and arrogant, Galileo believes that he is the one who will keep the dream alive and bring back rock music. He meets a girl with similiar beliefs who he names Scaramouche (Elena Skye) and the pair set off in search of real music. Both have stunning singing voices but it is Skye who really stole the show for me with the likes of "Somebody to Love" and "Hammer To Fall".
If you have an aversion to jukebox musicals, We Will Rock You is perhaps not the show for you. Drawing on every single cliche of the format, lyrics are used in dialogue and scenarios are built around song titles. It's cheesy and the plot is absolute nonsense- but it is also an awful lot of fun.
I know the show well so I was a little surprised by some of the changes that have been made for this tour. The character of Meat is now named Ozzy and she's Scouse rather than Scottish and the character Pop has been replaced by Buddy. It's not vital to the script, just a little niggle for someone far too invested in the original West End staging!
Packed with Queen songs, its hardly surprising that We Will Rock You delivers hit after hit. Throughout the performance it feels like the audience are itching to join in and the finale definitely lets them do that. The superb cast deliver a fantastic performance of a show that embraces its ridiculousness.
We Will Rock You is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow until 28 December.
Photo credit: Johan Persson
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