WE WILL ROCK YOU!
Bristol Hippodrome 30th October 2009
'We Will Rock You' is a stage musical based on songs by “Queen”. It is set 300 years in the future, on Planet Earth that has been renamed “planet mall” by the company, the company control what is fashionable, what music is released and what’s in style.On Planet Mall all musical instruments are banned. Company computers generate the tunes and the kids download them. Nothing is left to chance; hits are scheduled years in advance.
But resistance is growing.
Underneath the futuristic cities, down in the lower depths live the Bohemians. Rebels who believe that there was once a Golden Age when people formed their own bands and wrote their own songs. They call that time, The Rhapsody. Legend persists that somewhere on Planet Mall instruments still exist. Somewhere, the mighty axe of a great guitar god lies buried deep in living rock.
Galileo Figaro is a black sheep in school who doesn’t fit in; he hears strange fragments of rock song in his head but doesn’t know what these strange sounds are.
You first see Galileo watching some other students singing ‘radio Ga Ga’ Galileo Figaro is played by Alex Gaumond who gives a great performance and delivers the queen songs perfectly. In Galileo’s school all the students look the same, act the same and listen to the same music. Galileo’s teacher notices his odd behaviour and advises Galileo to conform like the rest of his class but he refuses by singing ‘I want to break free’ the teacher alerts the chief of police who is played by Jonathon Wilkes; the chief of police also arrests a girl who chooses to dress as a Goth.
‘Killer queen’ who is played by X-factor semi finalist Brenda Edwards is the bad guy in the musical who runs a company that releases all the computer made music; she hears of a prophecy that states that musical instruments have been hidden somewhere on Planet Mall in the "place of living rock", and a "bright star" will show the way to them. ‘killer queen’ becomes worried when she hears of the prophecy and orders the chief of police to stop the bohemians and orders her ‘minions’ to destroy all the rocks on the planet to try and prevent the prophecy. Basking in her power she then sings ‘play the game’.
Galileo and the Goth then wake up in a deserted hospital and after talking they realise they are outcasts they then sing a duet of ‘under pressure’; and decide to flee the hospital.