WE WILL ROCK YOU New Village Arts
Despite sub-par script, actors give an enjoyable and musically striking performance.
New Village Arts produced a very technically impressive and well-acted performance of a deeply flawed show. We Will Rock You is an attempt to make a jukebox musical that elevates its source material (the music of internationally-renowned British rock band, Queen) with a bizarre and endearing story, and in that attempt it is unsuccessful. Putting aside New Village Arts’ specific choices, the script fundamentally fails to impress, and the experience is less enriching than listening to Queen songs on their own.
The cast of WE WILL ROCK YOU at New Village Arts - Photo Credit: JEDZANT Photography
The story attempted by book writer Ben Elton takes place in a dystopian future where music has been made illegal and one global corporation owns the concept of making songs. This interesting-sounding premise immediately has its metaphorical Achilles sliced by the fact that the author has an infantile conception of dystopia. There is almost no specificity in the totalitarian government’s ideology or even their methods of suppressing dissent. Their constant surveillance and Orwellian torture infrastructure happens by what amounts to magic, and nothing is done to actually address the reasons a regime like this comes into power or how it corrupts those under its influence. If a good samaritan had whispered in Ben Elton’s ear that jukebox musicals are allowed to have interesting plots that ask serious questions about the society they speak to, we might have had a good thing going in regard to the story.
The protagonist is Galileo Figaro (Cooper Orio) a prole whose heavily controlled existence is interrupted by invasive dreams of Rock and Roll from the long past begin surfacing in his mind. The disruptions caused by the sudden resurfacing of counter-cultural music the regime had long-suppressed gets Galileo arrested by the law enforcement that is now completely privatized under the corporation that controls the entire world. In prison, Galileo meets a woman who he names Scaramouche (Sara Ledesma), an outcast banished for her love of clothes that don’t meet the bleached chrome aesthetic.
Together, they escape, and get swept up in the revolutionary movement that is determined for a return to the past where Rock and Roll was the messiah of the youth. This allows Elton to write stereotypical groupies and beatniks in a setting that is ostensibly centuries in the future. The remainder of the plot sees this ragtag bunch of rebels fighting against the cruel tyranny of Killer Queen (Samy Berman), the malicious dominatrix of the dystopia who formed when an erotic video game gained sentience and fused with its programmer, hell-bent on ruling the world.
The story is unsatisfying in a way that borders on surprising, but the cast and crew of New Village Arts are able to resuscitate this source material into a fun night of theatre with a lot of joyous hits from the ‘70s. The seven-person cast is flush with excellent singers and dancers who give their all to the musical moments and the story. The disparity in quality between the songs and the story that connects them is eye-wideningly stark, but the cast handles both admirably.
Orio and Ledesma are both extremely talented singers, and they bring it all to the brief moments of musical splendor afforded to them. Orio has the rock sound nailed and Ledesma soars with her character’s high notes. The two have a reasonable amount of charisma as the romantic leads, but they are hampered by the fact Ben Elton was both indecisive and inept in his construction of these character’s relationship. Orio and Ledesma do their best, and their best nets a pretty charming connection that develops over the course of the show and ends in on-again, off-again love.
The other central duo of the show is between Killer Queen and her chief henchman Khashoggi (Audrey Ward), who have an entertaining villainous dynamic of malevolent cruelty and subtextual romantic tension. Like the protagonists, they go about their dastardly deeds while occasionally slipping into a Queen song that they perform excellently before returning to the meandering plot.
The remainder of the ensemble are the outspoken revolutionaries harboring vestiges of the past, Rock and Roll posters and t-shirts, which are all annoyingly mispronounced in a story that does not care about the linguistic drift that would occur over the course of centuries at any other point. All these people have named themselves after rock stars from the past, and yearn for the day when the sacred ax will be wielded against the forces of the dystopia and bring down its tyrannical rule. Buddy (Juwan Stanford), Oz (Gaby Ritter), and Brit (Osvaldo Mendoza) are all extremely entertaining and portray their groovy characters with precision and hilarity. This group has the most touching moment in the show (which is also the only touching moment in the show) when they honor all the culture-shifting rock stars who passed before their time in the number “No One But You (Only the Good Die Young)”. This is a real tender and affecting moment nestled in an otherwise thoughtless jukebox musical, and Stanford, Ritter, and Mendoza make it warm and kind with the strength of their camaraderie.
In addition to the strong performances, all the technical elements of the show are wonderfully well-polished. Jesus Hurtado, the scenic and projections designer, in accordance with the ruthless minimalism entailed by a technological dictatorship, laid the set with stark white flats that convey the imposition of blank efficiency on the populace and allow for the large number of projections to be seamlessly blanketed across the stage. The performance makes heavy use of projections as visual aids to the story, without falling into the usual trappings of exclusively indicating location. The rebel hideout is effectively differentiated from the haunting sleekness of the buildings controlled by the dystopian government by being endearingly asymmetrical and littered with Rock and Roll–era memorabilia. The scenic and projection design is one of the best aspects of the show and merits serious praise.
The costumes by Maricela Alaniz are extremely successful as well in creating a distinction between Ben Elton’s baby version of a techno-authoritarian government and the scrappy band of music lovers determined to defeat them. The good guys are clad in authentic ‘60s and ‘70s garb that renders them deliciously colorful in relation to the whites and greys of Khashoggi and Co. All the paraphernalia that adorns the protagonists are well-curated and make them extremely fun to look at, while the servants of the global empire wear sparkly masks to cover their faces, as the regime makes all of its subjects voiceless. Do not let this convince you that thought was put into the story on the part of its creator, everything interesting in this case comes from Alaniz, everything exhausting from Elton.
If you are interested in watching a group of talented performers sing the heck out of some Queen music, it is worth going to We Will Rock You at New Village Arts, and you will be supporting a wonderful local theatre that is doing great work. However, you will not be experiencing a story on par with the musical gifts bestowed upon you.
Buy tickets here.
