We Will Rock You

Reviewed by Bill Raden
Ahmanson Theatre
Through August 24

Photo by Paul Kolnick

Once upon a time, book-writer and director Ben Elton was a brash young talent from Britain’s alternative comedy scene of the 1980s who, with the late Rik Mayall, co-wrote the groundbreaking Britcom The Young Ones, a show that brilliantly lampooned the bombast and hypocrisy of the post-punk-driven youth culture of that moment.

Once upon a time, Queen was a fresh, 1970s British arena-rock act that coupled operatic prog-rock bombast with glam androgyny in the flamboyant showmanship of its late front man Freddie Mercury in order to mint money with a powerfully crowd-pleasing hybrid of what might be described as anthemic music hall metal.

And if Elton’s acidic satirical chops (he also teamed with Rowan Atkinson in the Blackadder franchise) might seem a jukebox musical dream — match for the self-parodic, camp outrageousness of Queen, think again.

This road show version of We Will Rock You, which inexplicably ran on London’s West End for 12 years, weaves several dozen of Queen’s most renowned chart-toppers into a tired dystopian fantasy that offers all the depth of an old Scooby Doo cartoon coupled with the soul of a cash register.

Its nonsensical plot is an object lesson in derivative insipidity. In a distant future dominated by a totalitarian corporation called Globalsoft and ruled over by a tyrannical CEO named Killer Queen (Jacqueline B. Arnold channeling Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) and her sinister henchman Khashoggi (P.J. Griffith looking very Rutger Hauer-ish by way of Blade Runner).

Into this taffy-colored world of preprogrammed digital culture, where making music has been outlawed in favor of downloading official Globalsoft playlists, come outcasts Galileo Figaro (Brian Justin Crum) and Scaramouche (Ruby Lewis), who dream that there must be a more authentic alternative to official pop pap. Quicker than you can say The Matrix, Galileo is adopted by a Bohemian underground of fellow seekers as their long-foretold rock messiah.

To be fair, Elton is under no illusions that audiences will confuse such candy-coated juvenilia with, say, the gravitas of Oklahoma or the erudition of My Fair Lady. There’s a sense throughout the show that its bald pastiche of stale Orwellian tropes is intended to carry a satirical charge merely through uninspired repetition. And shades of vintage Elton occasionally turn up in some of the Bohemians, like their daft leader Buddy (Ryan Knowles), who seems an Americanized version of The Young Ones’ dunderheaded hippie Neal.

But there’s something about the histrionic gestalt of Queen and its musical sensibility that simply makes the kind of melodramatic appropriation attempted here seem like gilding the lily. Thanks in part to the show’s accomplished band, Nate Patten’s machine-perfect musical direction and to the impressive pipes of Crum and Lewis in particular, the evening almost justifies itself as a theatricalized Queen tribute concert that, with no dialogue at all, would have been ten times as satisfying.

Or maybe Elton himself pinpointed the problem best 30 years ago when he observed, “The minute you try to pander to some vague audience that you believe is out there, who will keep you on top or in the middle or wherever you happen to be, then you’ll never be funny again, and you’ll be a hypocrite, and you might as well forget it.”

Point taken. Consider We Will Rock You forgotten.

Ahmanson Theatre, 601 West Temple St., dwntn; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 & 6:30 p.m.; through August 24. (213) 972-4400, centertheatregroup.org.