Don’t you just love a LIVE SHOW!!!

 

We went to see WE WILL ROCK YOU on Saturday afternoon at Auckland’s venerable old lady, the Civic Theatre. Now, I have very fond memories of the Civic from my childhood–the star spangled ’sky’ ceiling, the blinking lions at the front (I’m still not convinced they’re not just dormant…) and there is nothing in today’s world, in my mind, that matches the absolute splendour and extravagance of a bygone era.

 

But I digress, as I tend to do.

I always felt that MiG was robbed when he wasn’t chosen to be the front man for INXS in 2005, but now, having seen him play the part of Gallileo Figaro in WE WILL ROCK YOU, I am so grateful that he didn’t make the band. He is absolutely awesome to watch and listen to. There’s a quality to his voice that remains with you long after the last notes of the show have died down.

The show itself, is spectacular. A feast for the visual and audial senses and for “Queen” lovers, of which I am proudly one.

In a nutshell, the musical is a futurist adventure set in the year 2350, a time when live music is banned on earth, but the kids are in rebellion, fighting against the all powerful Globalsoft Corporation which controls their lives and feeds them a diet of synthesized pop. The show features 24 of Queen’s awesome and legendary hits including Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions, Radio Ga Ga, Another One Bites The Dust and Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Honestly, until you’ve seen Annie Crummer in the role of Killer Queen you really haven’t lived.

I sat for a while this evening looking through the programme we purchased and relived again the wonder of attending this spectacular live show and I reminded myself that all too often we don’t indulge in true pleasures like this. Not since (during life before children) seeing a live production of the Rocky Horror Show  (featuring one of NZ’s late Prime Ministers, Sir Robert Muldoon, as the Narrator) have I enjoyed myself more.

It’s time we had alot more of this sort of thing. Fun. And yet, as much fun as it was, some of the ‘fun’ the writers poked at current musical trends put me in mind of a comparitive essay #1 progeny has been working on about films like Gattaca, S1M0NE and The Truman Show, and what we’re losing control of as individuals. Yeah, okay, I’ll admit to overthinking on this, but it just all seemed so pertinent, while being totally tongue in cheek at the same time.

So what about you? What’s the best live show you’ve ever seen? Was it a concert? A musical? A play? Tell me about it.