CityLife

We Will Rock You (West End)

Queen axeman Brian May joins the cast of We Will Rock You

IT was the biggest of Big Finishes, a perfectly-done stadium rock moment.

When Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor joined the cast of We Will Rock You for the first-night encore of Bohemian Rhapsody, the Palace Theatre went berserk.

Queen fans had already been treated to a string of the band’s hits as part of the show, but this was even more exciting for them all than snapping pics of Robbie Williams and the other celebs who’d turned out for the big night.

  This much - hyped and much-anticipated rock musical had arrived in Manchester with guitars blazing.

  But, especially if you weren’t a Queen fan, this big, loud and deliberately silly show took a good while to get going, not helped by a script from Manchester University graduate Ben Elton that scraped new lows in inane ‘jokes’ about Cliff Richard and Ernie, The Fastest Milkman In The West.

  The plot, devised in collaboration with original Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor as a showcase for 24 Queen songs, is set in the year 2039 when society is dominated by big corporations like Globalsoft and ‘real’ music is banned.

Instead everyone is fed ‘Computer Recorded Anodyne Pop’ and the only people who care about figures like Jimi Hendrix and – you guessed it – Freddie Mercury are ‘Bohemians’, who dress like Mad Max extras and take the names of the pop stars they don’t really know about, such as Britney Spears.

Killer Queen

Ranged against them are the Killer Queen (an unexpectedly successsful comic turn from X Factor finalist Brenda Edwards) and the villainous Colonel Khashoggi (Jonathan Wilkes).

But one young kid Galileo Figaro (Alex Gaumond) dreams fragments of pop lyrics and together with his equally rebellious ‘chick’ Scaramouche (Sarah French-Ellis) might be the saviour of the world.

Curly

Our own Kevin Kennedy has left Curly and Corrie well and truly behind to play Pop, the gentle librarian.

He doesn’t, with the best will in the world, have a lot to do but the rest of the young cast make up for it with eye-wateringly energetic routines set to a string of such Queen hits as Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Under Pressure and even Fat Bottomed girls!

  It is pretty absurd and unsubtle stuff , but, let’s face it, subtlety was never exactly the keyword for the Freddie Mercury-fronted Queen either.

The costumes and sets are impressive and it looks as if the show’s  Prestwich-raised choreographer and Strictly Come Dancing’s acid-tongued judge Arlene Phillips has lived up to her promise that we wouldn’t “get the B team” as so often happens when blockbuster shows transfer outside London.

 Critics panned it when the show opened in London seven years ago but Queen fans love We Will Rock You to such an extent that it’s gone on to gross over £100 million, becoming the longest running musical staged at the Dominion Theatre and enjoying successful tours around the globe although not, until now, in the UK.

Judging by the reaction to the show’s Manchester debut, it’s guaranteed to blow their minds for a good while to come.

We Will Rock You runs at Manchester’s Palace Theatre until Saturday, June 6. For tickets call 0844 847 2275.