20 years on, WE WILL ROCK YOU’s mixed messages are woefully behind the times

We Will Rock You began its run back in 2002 and is still playing to packed-out audiences after 20 years: clearly, a show that continues to do very well indeed. Whether this is due to the enduring popularity of Queen’s music – or musicals as a genre – a need for easy-going entertainment or the qualities inherent in the show is up for debate.

The Donald Gordon Theatre was full this evening, and the venue itself remains superb. In this case, we were very generously given the best seats in the house, and I feel that Wales Millennium Centre deserves a mention here for being one of Wales’ best and most important entertainment and arts venues.

The show itself is not something I can claim to have personally enjoyed. By my estimation, around half the audience seemed to really like it, the other half less so. For me (and my accompanying partner) there were several issues. The set design is clunky, outdated, and doesn’t make best use of the available space. Other shows I’ve seen here have done fantastic things on what I assume are lesser budgets. Additional to this is the poor use of the space by the dancers, the result of ineffectual choreography; the dancing itself could be less simplistic and showcase more of the dancers’ abilities.

The dialogue is clunky and formulaic, its jokes repetitive and all of a similar style. Fans of sitcoms like Blackadder (one of WWRY co-creator Ben Elton’s more notable previous works, of course) and Red Dwarf – I was one, as a teenager – would have liked this, possibly. Other audience members were laughing. Perhaps the humour just isn’t a good fit for myself and my friend.

However, the biggest issue for me is the mixed moral messaging of the show. I found it refreshing when, in the prerecorded audio introduction, Ben Elton addressed us as “ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary people”. Later on, main villain Killer Queen is given a piece of dialogue in which she proclaims her own “fluidity”. The character is physically very curvy and consumption-centred (‘hungry’ to control the world, if you will), her looks, dialogue and demeanour reminiscent of Ursula The Sea Witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid; it adds up to the feeling that We Will Rock You is both mocking gender fluidity and aligning it with greed.

Notwithstanding a token skirt-wearing male member of The Bohemians – the ‘goodies’ of the tale –the central story of the musical is heteronormatively boy-meets-girl, essentially. There is one main Black cast member but most are white. Much of the sneering at internet-savvy yoof and the internet as a whole seems old-fashioned, conservative, even ageist. And, whilst the central theme of the entire tale is the importance and power of rock‘n’roll, a stage-high screen serves to hide the real musicians who are playing live behind it, which is wholly hypocritical.

The singing is of a high standard, and of course, Queen’s original songs are good, but none of the cast’s voices were a patch on Freddie Mercury’s. Ben Elton instructs us, via voiceover, not to sing along, but his creation isn’t highbrow art and could be less precious about its audience’s manner of appreciation. Given the songs at its disposal, it could potentially be a Rocky Horror singalong for the modern age, in which case its weaker elements wouldn’t matter as much.

As it is, We Will Rock You takes itself too seriously whilst also being extremely, sometimes crudely, lowbrow. If it could reshape itself into something more interactive and engaging, and reconsider its mixed moral outlook, it might be better. But there were too many obvious fails during this show, for me, for it to feel anything other than disappointing.

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Tue 5 Apr

words MAB JONES