We Will Rock You Musical

Genghis Khan

Ancient Mariner
On Halloween, Oct. 31, my babe and I saw the Queen musical in Toronto.  Overall, we both enjoyed the show.  The acting was decent and the singing was very good.  My opinion on the musical definitely swayed depending on the particualar song being played.  If I liked the song, the show was great, if the song was just passable the show was not as good.  Some of the songs seemed forced and crammed into the show particularly early on.  Some of my favourite performaces were "Radio Ga Ga", "I Want to Break Free", "Under Pressure", "I Want It All", "Headlong", "Another One Bites the Dust", "We are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody".  The summary of the muscial can best be described by the ad from the theatre. 

"In a future world - where globalisation is complete - we are all safe, happy, homogenised consumers. One giant corporation tells us what to buy, what to wear, what to believe, how to live, what to think... but, deep beneath the gleaming cities, there are rebels who remember the time they call The Rhapsody... and make their own forbidden music."  -- Panasonic Theatre ad for the musical.

If you live in Great Britain, Germany and Canada you may still have a chance to see the musical.  They'll be playing it in Toronto until Jan. 4th.  We payed $50.00 for two tickets.  A great deal!
 
I saw it in London about a year and a half ago. Overall, I thought it was a good show, although a lot of my personal favourite Queen songs were quite understandably not included in favour of more popular ones. The plot is pretty minimal, however, so themed tribute concert is probably a better description than musical.
 
I've seen it twice now, and really enjoyed it both times! The worst thing about it was the incredibly annoying voice of the lead actor; fine when he sang, but awful when he spoke.
And as for the great deal part, Genghis, what you paid for two tickets got me half a ticket. ::)
 
First off, I'm moving this to GD. Queen rocked hard back in the day, but they don't belong in Metalfans. Plus, I'm about to shift the topic a bit...

I don't like the idea of all these musicals made out of rock music. I know there were such musicals for Billy Joel and Abba, and I know I've heard of many more and just can't recall the details right now.

I'm the first to grant that some may be good. The Queen one sounds good. I saw The Who's Tommy and The Buddy Holly Story on Broadway long ago, and The Who musical was good.

The Buddy Holly musical wasn't good as a musical, but they had Shadow's idea: tribute concert. The "musical" part of that one was only Act 1 - after intermission, they just had a concert, and that was cool.

But here's my main problem with such musicals: the songs are rarely designed to tell a coherent story. (Tommy is designed that way, which is why it worked.) But bands like Queen? There's no story in the songs, so it takes either brilliant writers and/or excessive liberties with the songs to make a story appear there. Maybe they got lucky with the Queen musical, but brilliant writers aren't common so I suspect most of these musicals would seem forced at best.
 
ok, ok another attempt :

the story line although allegoric is perfectly structured making Tommy one of the best rock operas ever written
thus very easy to be interpreted into a film or a theatrical piece
 
I always wanted to see some sort of adaptation of Styx's 'Kilroy Was Here'.  I had heard that there was intention of making a film, but I've never seen anything about it.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
But here's my main problem with such musicals: the songs are rarely designed to tell a coherent story. (Tommy is designed that way, which is why it worked.) But bands like Queen? There's no story in the songs, so it takes either brilliant writers and/or excessive liberties with the songs to make a story appear there. Maybe they got lucky with the Queen musical, but brilliant writers aren't common so I suspect most of these musicals would seem forced at best.

Mamma Mia was great. A decent story and the songs worked VERY well. Billy Joel's was a tad different. While ABBA's was a musical, Joel's was interpretive dance... no joke. there was a live band playing the songs and telling the "story" while you had ballet dancers interpret the whole thing... sucked monkey balls. After a while I just watched the band hahaha. I believe Queen's was the first one, but I am yet to see it.
 
So, what does anyone think about 'The Wall'.  I saw that about 20 years ago, so I don't remember it much-- it seemed a little disjointed to me, kind of like a weird dream sequence. 
 
I think the film version of The Wall is alright, but not particularly great. The animated bits are very good, but it's not only disjointed but also very repetitive. Some of its points are hammered in way too many times (yes, we understand that he misses his father) and most of it doesn't really add much to the music.

A musical would be difficult to do in a good way. All the dreams and hallucinations could probably be staged impressively, but in the end too much of it is sung by the same character, which does not make for a good musical. It would require quite a rewrite and really... why bother?
 
It would have been cool had they released a video to go with Is There Anybody Out There (the complete live performance of The Wall released in 1999), because judging from the pictures in the booklets, that must have been the perfect show to go with it.

I saw the Tommy musical way back in 1995, and I loved it. I was an impressionable kid back then, and I'm pretty sure that it was what sparked my love for hard rock music- but I'm not sure if I would like it today.

But generally, like SMX, I don't really like the idea of rock musicals. Not if it uses pre-existing songs, at least. It's always possible to create a story by compiling songs (I keep doing that myself all the time), but really, the songs are usually meant to stand by themselves and tell their own stories, so a lot of interpretation is needed to make them work together, and a lot needs to be compromised. Apparently it worked for Queen, but it wouldn't work for Iron Maiden or Metallica. Truth be told though, I'm not a big fan of musicals in general.*



*I should mention one huge exception, though: Hair. I love it.
 
I like to to see acting (especially in cinema). I like music.

Somehow I don't care for the combination, the genre called musical. It gets sweet. It feels like an excuse for not being able to act well, or to perform music well, so let's mix it so it won't be obvious. Another aspect I am not fond of is the lack of originality (the story or the music always seems to come from a better source).
 
Perun said:
It's always possible to create a story by compiling songs (I keep doing that myself all the time),

I've always thought Rebellion in Dreamland, Man on a Mission (GR), Replica (SA) and Keeper of the Seven Keys (H) made for a good story :D
 
Let's open a thread for that. I know I should do it, but I should much more return to my studies right now...
 
national acrobat said:
And as for the great deal part, Genghis, what you paid for two tickets got me half a ticket. ::)

That's why I waited.  The "themed tribute concert" was planned last year, but the tickets were too expensive. 
Shadow said:
I think the film version of The Wall is alright, but not particularly great. The animated bits are very good, but it's not only disjointed but also very repetitive. Some of its points are hammered in way too many times (yes, we understand that he misses his father) and most of it doesn't really add much to the music.

A musical would be difficult to do in a good way. All the dreams and hallucinations could probably be staged impressively, but in the end too much of it is sung by the same character, which does not make for a good musical. It would require quite a rewrite and really... why bother?

I have seen this back in high school and while the movie made me think, I also re-visioned some scenes of how they "should" have been done.  Still, if an album is a conceptual one, a video accompanying such work of art is a great bonus.  The Wall movie made me love Pink Floyd even more.
 
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