London,

Are Queen the champions?

By Pete Clark 15.05.02

The band called Queen have always been the piece that did not fit into the rock 'n' roll puzzle. I grew up with them, witnessed everything from their gawky beginnings to Freddie's last flickering, and have never known anyone who possessed a single one of their records.

For a band that sold as many records as this one, that is a puzzle in itself. We Will Rock You is a curiously apt testimonial. It is a curate's egg attempting to achieve the status of a souffle.

No expense has been spared in this production. Robert De Niro has backed it, and Ben Elton is the author. Hydraulics, back projections, and lights are of the finest calibre. Elton's story takes us to a time in the future when rock music, as made by perspiring human beings hammering away at wires attached to wood, has been declared illegal. Just so that we know where we are, the first person to appear on stage is Nigel Planer in some sort of headband going through a lot of back issues of the New Musical Express. The immediate effect of this dusty apparition is to dump us firmly in the past. The future, a place which never transfers easily to the stage, has never looked more old-fashioned.

This being a musical, Nigel is not left on his own for long. There is an ensemble waiting in the wings and soon they are swamping the stage. We have a hero called Galileo, who for some reason is played by an American. By Galileo's side is Scaramouche, his feisty and lustily-lunged companion. The pair are drawn into an underground movement which has retained some faint trace memory of the disturbing power of rock music. Sadly, all they remember of rock is the music of Queen, possibly the single most pronounced example of corporate entertainment ever.

The fact that they are all dressed as punks does not disguise this for a moment. If a terrible totalitarian government comes to power in the future, and heaven forfend that this should happen, the authorised playlist will include Simply Red, Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Sting. But mostly Queen. They are, after all, the champions.

Which is not to suggest that We Will Rock You does not have its moments. Queen had, to put it mildly, a theatrical bent, and some of their nursery rhyme terrace chants have the power to raise the occasional recalcitrant hair. The live band, although not nearly loud enough, give a reasonable account of themselves, even throwing in a few bum notes just in case we thought backing tapes were in operation. Elton, when he gets his feet out of the sticky goo of this cloying parable, has the odd line which, without causing any action in the ribcage department, does promote smile lines. If I tell you that a bloke plays a character called Britney and a girl plays Meat, then you might guess at which floor the humour lift has stopped. Perhaps the biggest puzzle of all was where to fit in Bohemian Rhapsody, recently voted the best pop song ever made. It is heavily flagged throughout, not only with characters names but with snatches of lyric.

THE problem is that the words to Bohemian Rhapsody make no sense at all, which leaves it to be tagged on at the end of the show as an afterthought. But what an afterthought. Here is where Queen's music makes perfect sense, devoid of spurious context and sung just for the hell of it. So the best advice for the coming summer's entertainment is this: We Will Rock You, the last 10 minutes. The world premiere was boosted with a surprise appearance by De Niro. Flanked by Elton and band members Brian May and Roger Taylor as they arrived at London's Dominion Theatre last night, De Niro was his usual taciturn self.

When asked what he was looking forward to that evening he replied: "The whole thing."

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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