The much-hyped Queen musical We Will Rock You will not rock you. It will anger, disappoint and annoy, but it will not rock you because it is so bad.

I had the displeasure of seeing it in Toronto this week. The play is meant to be a satire of our brave new Idol world of music. It features a world that listens to Radio Ga Ga and mindlessly follows the musical dictates of the corporate giant GlobalSoft. The two heroes struggle to break out and find the true rock and roll music epitomized by the music of Queen.

Great premise, but the show fails and fails miserably because ultimately it becomes the thing it claims to hate - crap. The acting is cardboard and forced.

The dancing and choreography feature repetitive air-guitar routines that lack flare and symmetry and are embarrassing to watch. The singing, while not bad, suffers from inevitable comparisons to the multi-octave range of Freddie Mercury.

The script is riddled with groan-inspiring cliches, and the Toronto show is embellished with patronizing CanCon mentions including Bachman, Turner “Overweight” and a flash of the girl hero’s underpants emblazoned with - wait for it - the Maple Leaf Flag. Hardy har har. If this is Canadian humour then pity the poor Canadian.

But what is most disturbing about this show is the deep and I believe unintended irony of a crappy Idolized production that is attempting to critique a crappy Idolized music culture.

At the same time the actors criticize the fictional audiences for following the dictates of the music industry, ushers are prompting the audience to wave their hand-held florescent lights. They shout Idol-inspired Wooooooo! Wooooooo! and the audience shouts Wooooo! Woooooo! in return.

It’s as if the production is saying ” Look audience, you are as stupid as we said you were because you are doing exactly what we tell you to do, no matter how bad we are.”

So I suppose the joke is ultimately on the audience because it paid the good money to be exposed to this bargain basement entertainment.

Poor Freddie will be rolling over in his grave.

Do yourself a favour: don’t go.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Canada, Uncategorized, culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.