Queen in London!!! Sort of...

One of the first days here in London we went on a walking tour of the area around our flats and when I saw the ginormous gold statue of Freddie Mercury outside the Dominion Theatre, I knew it was the one performance I had to see during my time in London. For all of you who don't know, I LOVE Queen and I mean love, love, love. They are my third favorite band and I would give up my first born child to see them and Freddie perform live, sadly that is not possible so I had to go see the next best thing in London, We Will Rock You. The show is set in a futuristic dystopia London, where all human created music has been eliminated by the evil corporation Globalsoft and everyone is known by their email address. The shows protagonists Galileo and Scaramouche are two outsiders in school who team up with the Bohemians to take down the corporation and restore the power of rock n' roll to the world, all while singing all of Queen's greatest hits.

As a Queen fan I absolutely loved this performance. Yes the plot was kind of hockey and out there, but that really wasn't the point of the show. The show was there to showcase the greatness of Queen in a musical format. All the renditions of the songs did the band great homage and I'm sure Freddie would have been proud to see his songs put on stage and performed for more of the world to see. One slight disappointment was that they did not do one of my favorites “You're my Best Friend” but with so many great songs that I call my favorites I was bound to not here them all.

At the end of the show they find the sacred rock and bring down the evil corporation with the power of rock n' roll, all while getting the crowd on their feet with rockin performance of “We will Rock You”. After getting everyone all riled up the cast leaves the stage and they put a message on the screen asking if people want to here everyone’s favorite, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and of course everyone does. So the whole cast comes back out and performs and awesome version of it, sending everyone in the audience home happy.

For the super Queen fan like me this show was awesome, but I could definitely see some more fair weather Queen fans being turned off by the plot and the overall lack of interesting material. But I loved it and it was by far the best theatre performance I have seen while in London. Sorry Dr. Q, most of the performance you took us to for great, save for Hamlet, but I truly do love Queen that much.


Martin Faerber