Credit: Emily Cooper
Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) at Malkin Bowl, Stanley Park until August 27, 2022
Tickets from $20 (student rush) to $65 at www.TUTS.ca or 1-800-514-3849 ($5 charge for phone orders)
Posted July 11, 2022
“We will/we will/rock you!” Well, it was a bit of a shy audience and we didn’t exactly blow the roof off Malkin Bowl on the opening night of We Will Rock You, a tribute to the music of Queen. We didn’t holler, “Hoochie Mama” on cue as we were instructed by Buddy (high-energy Simon Auclair-Troughton) but we did eventually do ‘the wave’ back and forth in the air. It’s a lot of fun and, naturally, the music is insane. Insane, as in ‘great’.
Sure, it’s a silly plot: it’s 300 years in the future, everything is e-this or e-that, there are no musical instruments left; rock and roll is seriously dead, quashed by the Killer Queen (fantastically talented Steffanie Davis in a mile-high red wig and meters and meters of gold lamé designed by costume designer Brian Ball). She’s the CEO of Globalsoft, the international corporation that’s running everything on the planet now. No room for individuality or spontaneity. It’s downright Orwellian.
Credit: Emily Cooper
But wait: somewhere there is an electric guitar – “the most powerful weapon known to man” – stashed away and just waiting for someone to find it and rock on. The Bohemians, a group of sewer-dwelling rebels outlawed by the Killer Queen and pursued by her villainous henchman Khashoggi (Tim Howe), await The Dreamer. And who is The Dreamer? Galileo, of course, and his newly discovered sidekick Scaramouche. And does she do the fandango? “What’s a fandango?” she asks.
Galileo hears music and words in his head, music from a bygone day. Now the Bohemians just need to find that guitar and bring rock and roll back to the planet.
Credit: Emily Cooper
Plot aside, there’s a lot of great music under the musical direction of Christopher King: twenty of Queen’s iconic songs including, naturally, Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions and We Will Rock You.
Always amazing is the abundance of talent – professional and amateur – on the Malkin Bowl stage. I considered posting the entire bio for Danny Malena who plays Galileo because it’s impressive and unusual. Short version: Malena entered med school at the U of T in 2016 and is taking a short break this summer from his third year (of five) as a resident physician in psychiatry. And here we all just thought he was an immensely talented kid, singing and rocking his way through We Will Rock You. His bio ends with, “he hopes his example shows you really can “have it all” and pursue both arts and sciences!”
Credit: Emily Cooper
Playing Scaramouche, Galileo’s love interest, is the equally talented Jessica Spenst. Singly or together, these two (plus Davis, Howe, Auclair-Troughton, Tanner Zerr as Brit, and Jennifer Suratos as Oz) really rock the Malkin Bowl. The voices are terrific, the choreography (by Shay Kuebler) is lively, and the enthusiasm and energy output of the entire cast is over the moon. Lots of great lighting effects by designer Robert Sondergaard who also designed the set.
Director Saccha Dennis pulls it all together. We Will Rock You is a sort of hybrid the way Mamma Mia! is: part musical featuring ‘found’ music, part concert. With book written by Ben Elton, the show premiered in London’s West End in 2002.
I say it every year: TUTS is a package. Popcorn, hot chocolate or coffee or wine, porta potties, maybe a picnic dinner by the Rose Garden before the show (my own family’s tradition over the years), mosquito repellent, blankets, all that singing, all that dancing and moonlight through Stanley Park’s towering trees. What’s not to love?
It’s a Vancouver tradition going back to the 1940s. And it’s special.