Abba's Mamma Mia is a phenomenon: seen by more than 10 million people, 15 production companies in 12 countries, and generating an unknown amount of revenue. I can't blame other folks for thinking that they should vie for a slice of the retro-rock theater pie.
The latest, after the Sahara's Saturday Night Fever, is We Will Rock You, based on the music of Queen. Not nearly as good as Mamma Mia but far better than Rent, it succeeds on some levels and falls flat on others.
Ben Elton's story respects the attitudes of the '70s super-group Queen and its lead singer Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1992: campy and mock operatic.
In the future, the world is almost completely controlled by a single corporation, Globalsoft. The good news is the GaGa logo looks great on T-shirts. The bad news is all the music is sterile and coldly calculated to do nothing but turn a profit. To keep it that way, all musical instruments and creativity have been banned. Insert American Idol joke here.
Naturally, there are rebels. Galileo Figaro is a high-schooler who hears the voices of long-dead rockers but has no idea what phrases like "Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?" mean. Scaramouche ... well, she is just there because every lone rebel hero needs a romantic interest. The pair are captured by Khashoggi, right-hand man to the Killer Queen. But they are allowed to escape to lead Khashoggi to the real rebels, the Bohemians, keepers of the legend of the ax in the stone, a hidden guitar whose strings hold the power to usurp the queen's rule.
The leads, Tony Vincent and Aspen Miller, are superb. Vincent, originator of the Galileo role, has the lizard-king, rock-god posture down cold. Miller is engaging as the spunky rocker chick with a tender heart.
Not to be outdone are Rich Herbert as Khashoggi and Patti Russo of Meat Loaf as the Killer Queen. Both own their flat characters, with Russo's performance heavily inspired by Tim Curry's immortal Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
But competing for our attention is the staging. Staircases appear and vanish, as does a Vegas bar, the front gates of Graceland and an entire city. In one scene, a giant Space Invaders game descends. In another, multiple screens graphically accompany the torture of the captured Bohemians. A platform exists only to rise and spin Herbert and Russo. Later, a giant drill head carrying Russo puzzlingly descends from the sky, serving no purpose. In this contest, the props win.
It doesn't help that the story is tissue-thin, even by musical theater standards. Too much effort is spent trying to get plot elements across, not to mention scenes that only exist to showcase shoehorned-in songs.
The script by Elton, famous in England for his wit, is full of sly topical references (which will be rewritten as the passage of time demands) but lacks much of the wordplay that made his Black Adder TV series such a hit. Instead, we're given gags like an ignorant male Bohemian calling himself Britney Spears. Funny, but hardly so clever you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
But, this is a musical based on Queen. The story is goofy and grand, the music is fun, and there are plenty of moments that raise the hair on your arms. Up there someplace, Freddy Mercury is smiling.