Reviewed by James Karas
Do you love rock’n’roll music? Then go online to the Mirvish website and grab you tickets to We Will Rock You, now playing at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre. When you attend the show make sure you get your green glow stick so that you can wave it around after every number that you love. You may not need any more information that I will impart in my review.
For those less thrilled with rock music I should mention a few facts that they may wish to know. First is the volume at which the singing and music are played. You may wish to classify it as great, normal, loud, very loud, deafening or eardrum shattering loud. Chacun a son gout. But the noise from the audience, from applause to joining in the singing should not be understated. They were having a blast.
The lighting deserves a few words. It is an almost non-stop effusion of multi-colored brightness that lights up the stage and spreads onto the audience. It adds to the excitement and euphoria of the spectators. You may find it perfect accompaniment to the music, singing and dancing on stage or you may consider it a bit over the top.
We Will Rock You may be considered a concert but it does have a plot on which to hang its songs. We are in Globalsoft which could be a corporation, a country or a planet that is ruled by the Killer Queen (Maggie Lacasse) with her head of security Khashoggi (Patrick Olafson). Globalsoft is a totalitarian society sometime in the future and it has outlawed rock music. It may be Orwellian but it struck me as Nazi with the black uniforms of its forces looking like SS soldiers.
We hear that rock’n’roll is dead and has been replaced by Tik Tok. Maybe
almost dead, because there are those who are trying to revive it. One of them is
Galileo (Callum Lurie) who thunders some
rock songs and he joins a band of Bohemians with his cohort Scaramouche (Paige
Foskett). Galileo is considered a prophet or as someone on whom the history of
rock music has been uploaded or something else that I did not catch. The musical relies on AI and other computer terminology.
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The Killer Queen and her collaborators deprogram people who still love rock music. They also know how to torture people. Oh yes, rock music is stored on some ancient gismos called VCR tapes but no one knows how or on what to play it.
The Bohemians are looking for a sacred rock where the remains of the riches of rock music can be found. They go to Graceland, the shrine/house of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock. Rock is saved or revived and the title song of the musical is sung with enormous relish and enthusiasm including the participation of the audience raucously and by waving their glow sticks. It is an amazing display of enthusiasm on stage and off.
The singing by the principals or the ensemble ranges, as I said, from loud to, let’s just say, extremely loud. Some of the songs can be sung at lower volume but in a rock concert that may be inadvisable or unthinkable.
Lurie has several chances to display his vocal talents and he does a great job. Scaramouche joins him with the same effect. The Killer Queen and Khashoggi get their turn and the latter brags that he can hit a high C. Nice try.
Jean-Marc Saumer is responsible for the complex scene designs while David Lee (Studios XF-40) handles the lighting and Yohan Gingras is the video designer, Vanessa Boriss is the costume designer, all of them deserve kudos for what are obviously complex jobs.
Steve Bolton is the director and, with Megan Brydon and Yannick Moisan, the choreographer.
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We Wiil Rock You by Queen (music and lyrics), Ben Elton (story and script) and adaptation by Steve Bolton opened on December 4, 2025, and continues at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com
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