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Queen musical 'We Will Rock You' opens
04/22/2007 12:07 PM, AP
Michael Kuchwara
For more than 10 years, the Pantages, a restored movie and vaudeville house on a shabby block of Yonge Street, was home to "The Phantom of the Opera," the wildly popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Now, nearly eight years later, the theater, corporately rechristened the Canon, is occupied by another British import, "We Will Rock You," which uses songs of that iconic 1970s and '80s rock band Queen. And while no one is suggesting this futuristic comic strip of a musical will last as long as "Phantom," its producer and creative team undoubtedly would like to see a successful Toronto run.
"We have to look to audiences to tell us whether we can have that," says producer David Mirvish. "The way things are going, we have every hope that that will happen. The chances are we are going to be the home of rock for the summer."
It could be boon for Mirvish and, in general, commercial Toronto theater, which has faltered in recent years, unable to attract long runs like it did in the days of "Phantom," "Mamma Mia!" and "The Lion King." Those runs were fueled, in part, by American audiences, who, since 9/11 and SARS, have not been as plentiful. One question mark will be if the rising Canadian dollar and more stringent American passport requirements affect cross-border travel.
"We Will Rock You," which opened here April 10, premiered in England in May 2002 and is still running there despite what its British director and book writer Ben Elton laughingly says "were possibly the worst reviews in the history of London theater."
Some Toronto critics sniffed, too, but the notices were not as scathing as those in England and a few were practically favorable. The Globe and Mail, a national daily, gave the musical three stars out of four. And most of the reviewers cheered the show's music — the work of all four of the band's members: singer Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1991; guitarist Brian May; drummer Roger Taylor and bass player John Deacon.
For Elton, it's a vindication of sorts. The ebullient novelist, actor, director and standup comic, who's best known in America as co-writer of the "Blackadder" TV series, was the spark plug who jolted "We Will Rock You" to life. But then the man has been an admirer of Queen's music for years.
"They are very much my generation," the 47-year-old Elton says. "I left home when I was 16 to go away to college to study drama, and the very week I left, Queen went to No. 1 with `Bohemian Rhapsody.' ...but I certainly didn't pursue them or ever imagine particularly that our lives would cross — let alone bond in the kind of extraordinary way they have. Brian and Roger and I are very, very, very close colleagues now and have been for five years. It would be lovely to say that they stared down at me from my bedroom wall — but I only had pictures of girls on my bedroom wall."
Elton had to be convinced that there was a stage work in the group's music, although he says: "The theatrical potential of Queen's music is a no-brainer. It's unique in pop music in its kind of grandiose, theatrical, faux-operatic style. Freddie, of course, was immensely interested in every aspect of theater. Perhaps his only rival in that was (David) Bowie in the way he brought theater into his work."
Individually and together, all four members of Queen wrote hits: Mercury, for example, creating "Bohemian Rhapsody," Deacon writing "Another One Bites the Dust," Taylor "A Kind of Magic" and May, the well-known anthem "We Will Rock You." But how do you put them into a musical?
It was producer Phil McIntyre who had the idea for a musical, one based on Mercury's life, but the notion never went anywhere. McIntyre asked Elton to get involved but he was busy with Lloyd Webber writing a musical called "The Beautiful Game."
It was only later that Elton reconsidered, but he rejected the biographical idea. "I wanted something that would reflect the spirit of Queen. And if you think of one word in Britain to reflect Queen it's `legend,'" the man says. "We like our legendary rock, and the moment you think legend, you think suddenly Arthur ... King Arthur ... the Sword in the Stone and I'm thinking what about an ax in the stone? What about a mighty guitar buried in rock and he who can draw it forth and play the mighty riff? All kinds of heavy-metal silliness."
At the same time, Elton had seen the movie "The Matrix," and he reveled in its fantasies about people "abused by a vast brain that's kind of running the planet and nobody knows it."
"So I imagined a `Matrix' world where, yes, the machine controls everything, but only in an effort to constantly force it to consume more entertainment and pay for it and download more and more of it."
In this world, 300 years in the future, musical instruments are banned and the kids are only allowed to purchase computerized, digitalized pop music — until a young rebel, an outsider who frees them from their musical bondage to the aptly named Killer Queen.
"It suddenly struck my that you could combine King Arthur with all the usual future fantasies from `1984' to `The Matrix' and you would have a Queen musical," Elton says.
That includes have an outcast as its young hero, called Galileo, just like in "Bohemian Rhapsody," who hooks up with a feisty young woman named Scaramouche.
"We Will Rock You" may be a British musical, but the Toronto production has a unique Canadian flavor, an attempt to localize the show, something which was done for all the other productions including Germany, Switzerland, Japan and an American version in Las Vegas in 2004.
"You go and see most musicals in one city, you're basically — with the proviso of how talented the cast is — going to see exactly the same thing in another city," Elton says. "That is not the case with `We Will Rock You.' It's 10 percent different, and that 10 percent is really quite considerable."
In Canada, the difference means a production peppered with references Canadians will recognize — such as Maple Leaf Gardens, Loblaws (a Canadian supermarket chain) and that national superstar Celine Dion, among others. And the musical is filled with Canadian performers as well — not to mention Canadian musicians, all of whom were auditioned by May and Taylor.
"We cast it right across the country ... (finding) people from Vancouver Island all the way to Newfoundland," Mirvish says.
Shaggy-haired Yvan Pedneault, a 26-year-old from Sept-Iles in eastern Quebec, plays Galileo, and he had to learn the role phonetically.
"I had no idea that I would be able to speak in English," Pedneault says in charmingly fractured English. "I went to the open call just to get more experience. People tell me that when I sing in English, they can't tell that I am French. The real challenge for me is the spoken language. They have hired a dialogue coach for me to help me erase my accent."
Pedneault is a veteran of the French-Canadian production of "Rent," while his co-star, 20-year-old Erica Peck, was in her second year of theater school when she auditioned for the role of Scaramouche.
"I had never been to an open call before," Peck says. "And I was the third person in a row to sing `Heartbreaker' by Pat Benatar." It obviously didn't hurt.
Elton worked closely with the actors, helping them find the right comedic touch for their characters, something he has done with various productions. "We have had many different styles of Galileo," he says. "We have had wonderful fun using the whole French-Canadian texture added to this production. With it, you've got your natural outsider already."
"We Will Rock You" has not had the high visibility "The Lord of the Rings" did when it played Toronto last year at Mirvish's Princess of Wales Theatre. That lavish production cost upward of $20 million, one of the most pricey flops in recent theater history. A revised version opens in London in June.
By comparison, "Rock" is inexpensive, costing, according to Mirvish, an estimated $4.4 million, primarily because he was able to rent sets from various other productions including Las Vegas and South Africa. Recreating the sets would have added another $2 million to the budget.
The producer has been cautious in selling the show, letting audience members spread the word.
"We are treating the musical like it's rock 'n' roll. So we've kept a very short period (of tickets) on sale," he says — initially only for seven weeks, then through May 27 and only just recently to Labor Day.
With 2,300 seats, the Canon is a large theater, and for three performances a week — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings — Mirvish closes off the balcony, reducing the capacity to 1,800.
"We'd rather have less seats and be packed," he says. "We know that the history of the `We Will Rock You' is that it was stronger in London in its second year than in its first. So the trick is to hang in there and let the word of mouth get out. Having a few less seats at the beginning is just fine."
The strategy seems to working. In its first five weeks of performances, "We Will Rock You" has paid back 30 percent of its investment, according to Mirvish spokesman John Karastamatis. Judging from strong ticket sales, another 30 percent to 40 percent could be returned in the next four weeks, he added.
And Mirvish already has his next pop musical waiting in the wings: the North American premiere of the current London hit "Dirty Dancing," set to begin performances Oct. 31 at his Royal Alexandra Theatre.
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On the Net:
http://www.mirvish.com
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