Friday, August 20, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Rock in a Hard Place

Queen's satiric `We Will Rock You' imagines a futuristic world where Simon Cowell has killed rock 'n' roll

Scaramouche, played by Aspen Miller, and the Teen Queens perform "Somebody to Love" in "We Will Rock You" at Paris Las Vegas. Courtesy Photo

Ben Elton asks the question pondered by once-and-future headbangers even before "Wayne's World":

"What does `Bohemian Rhapsody' mean?

"It can be about a psycho killer or a holy priest," he notes. "The great thing about rock and pop is that it means whatever you want it to mean in the context you find it in."

But Elton's interpretation of Queen's signature song arguably counts the most. He's the writer and Las Vegas director of "We Will Rock You," the comedic musical based on the Queen catalog.

The group's 1976 "mock opera" hit becomes a pivotal running joke in the U.S. debut of the 2002 musical, which launched Monday at Paris Las Vegas for an open-ended run. Whoever Galileo and Scaramouche might have been in the song, they are now the rebellious young heroes of a futuristic satire in which musical instruments are banned from a corporate dystopia.

"It's a very gentle satire," says Elton, better-known overseas as a fixture of British comedy and the prolific author of plays, novels, and plays adapted from his novels ("Popcorn," "Blast from the Past").

"The core joke is that rock 'n' roll is now an ancient, long-forgotten art form that is only half-remembered by the rebels who believe," he explains. However, "these Bohemian self-styled rebels who remember the age of rock don't really remember it at all, and they're so confused about it they revere the Partridge Family as much as they revere the Beatles."

Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor are co-producers of the venture. They could have signed away the rights and cashed the check, but chose to remain hands-on to make sure the show didn't end up sounding like the Partridge Family.

"We call ourselves the guardians," says May, who has made it his mission to live up to the 1977 title tune that he wrote.

"The vibe of the show and the liveness of the band are something I particularly keep a very close eye on. These freedoms shall be protected," he quips. "It shall not be `My Fair Lady.' "

While May has learned to respect the theater -- his wife, Anita Dobson, is an actress -- Taylor was even more adamant. "I grew up loathing musical theater," he declares. "Men in tights, bursting into song and jumping around. I just hated it."

Even the generally well-received Broadway version of "The Who's Tommy" bothered him. "I think it got too arty," Taylor says. "(`We Will Rock You') sounds great and it is about rock 'n' roll. `Tommy' is rock 'n' roll trying to escape what it is."

Such misgivings about a Queen stage venture were somewhat at odds with a showy, tongue-in-cheek band that helped define the theatrics of arena rock and was perhaps destined for some type of theatrical crossover. "I suppose it was inevitable," May admits.

"We Will Rock You" came to life as an alternate idea to a movie about the band's over-the-top frontman, Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS complications in November 1991. Elton passed on the first suggestion from Tribeca, the production company co-founded by actor Robert De Niro.

"I think Queen -- and Freddie above all -- were about comedy as much as rock," he says. "He had a very big sense of humor and the whole band had a big sense of fun and silliness and irony.

"I said all that should be reflected in this entertainment. I don't think it should be a heart-rending story about a great artist dying of AIDS."

The possibilities of a "back catalog" musical became clear after ABBA's songs were crafted into another British-born hit, "Mamma Mia!" in 1999.

"What you may call catalog musicals I would call celebrations and reworkings of the music that people love," Elton says. "The theater is now the one place where people can enjoy great rock 'n' roll in comfort. ... People used to get their pop music from the theater, before the days of recording and radio."

Queen's manager approached Elton, who had been a fixture on British TV since his days of co-writing "Blackadder" with Richard Curtis, who later wrote the screenplays for "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Bridget Jones's Diary."

Queen's 1984 hit "Radio Ga Ga" was the song that cemented the notions "Pop Idol" -- the British forerunner to "American Idol" -- had given Elton for "a general satire on our corporate world and the marketing and the sanitization of our rock 'n' roll music."

"Rock You" begins with titles on an overhead screen listing key dates in the rise and fall of rock. The big turn takes place in 2000: "Simon Cowell begins cloning pop stars."

By 2040, the audience is told, "All musical instruments are banned. Rock is dead."

That sets the stage for a future rebellion of the Bohemians -- the underground rockers and punks -- against the Global Soft Corporation. "Entertainment has become so profitable, the fear that a John (Lennon) and Paul (McCartney) or a punk movement might emerge and buck the marketing program is too big a risk to take," Elton explains.

Yes, it's satire. For now. "If you think of the amount of work or preparation that goes into making the American Idol," it's not so far off, he says.

s"When I was a kid," says the 45-year-old writer, "singles climbed to No. 1, and we knew what the hit of the summer was at the end of the summer when the dust had settled. Now, singles go in at No. 1, and if they don't, they're deemed to be failures."

At the heart of the tale is a love story, as Galileo (alternately played by Tony Vincent and Jason Wooten on the 10-show weekly schedule) and Scaramouche (Aspen Miller and Kacie Sheik) discover a mutual appeal in being outsiders. "Every classroom's got them, every movie's about them," Elton says. "They discover the champions inside themselves."

The producers turned to the concert realm to recruit Mark Fisher and Willie Williams, whose credits include U2's "PopMart" tour and the Rolling Stones' "Bridges to Bablylon" stadium set. The video-heavy stage design lowers its live band on an automated bridge that straddles the rear of the stage.

It's the band that helped assuage the fears of May and Taylor. "They're not session players. We actually formed a band," Taylor says. "We got some rock 'n' roll players."

And the phrase "musical theater" remained "one of the very dirty words in our whole company," the soft-spoken May adds. "When somebody says, `That is very musical theater,' that is bad."

The nuances are somethimes "pretty hard to put a finger on," he admits. "But there is always a moment when you can go in there and say, `That's pretty good but that isn't us.' Sometimes it's just a question of changing one note in a chord, or changing the way a song ends."

So what did become of "Bohemian Rhapsody," which Elton admits to building backward from while structuring the plot?

"It's like the Dead Sea scrolls," Elton explains. "They've got these scraps of text and they can't work it out. It becomes clear that Queen didn't know what it meant either. So that's one of the jokes.

"We have a lot of fun at the expense of rock as well, at the expense of the posturing of bands like Queen. It's not just the pop idol machine that's the target," he says.

"Great rock 'n' roll is silly."