MANILA, Philippines - The Singapore production of the West End musical ?We Will Rock You? opened at the Esplanade Theatre last Friday, and the verdict is loudly unanimous: Long live Queen!

Queen, of course, is one of the world?s greatest rock bands. Since the death of its front man, composer and chief vocalist Freddie Mercury, its legend has grown, and it is to the credit of the remnants of the band that they have remained a close-knit group to protect the Queen legacy and ensure its perpetuation.

In the case of the musical, the direct involvement of the Queen remnants, Brian May and Roger Taylor, who tweaked the original lyrics to suit the book and story by Ben Elton, ensures that the instrumentation hews closely to the Queen original.

Many Queen aficionados would be surprised, in fact, that May?s unmistakably brash and blistering lead-guitar pyrotechnics has been retained, so much so that they would think May has taken his place among the musical?s instrumentalists, many of whom are only in their 20s and were probably not yet born at the heyday of the songs.

It helps that the production features somebody who?s very familiar to Asian audiences: Filipino-Australian MiG Ayesa, who became a household name in the region for landing on the Top 3 in the global search to replace Michael Hutchence, the late front man of the top Australian rock band INXS, in the hit 2005 reality TV show ?Rock Star: INXS.?

Many Asians who came to the opening night admitted they were lured to watch the show by Ayesa and the prospect of reliving the glory of Queen?through Ayesa?s lung power and pelvic passion, of course. To them, Queen is Queen and Ayesa is King.

Ayesa had come close to winning the 2005 contest, but his theater background apparently got in the way. Before joining the contest, he had already built a sizeable theater resumé, having played Angel in the West End production of ?Rent? and Danny Zuko in the Australian production of ?Grease.?

Apparently the ?Rock Star? judges and texters had thought in the end that, in joining the contest, Ayesa seemed in-between jobs and was merely auditioning for another stage role.

In any case, a theater background sounded too establishment, a tad too conservative for a rock group like INXS that, in its peak in the 1980s, had been called the Down Under reincarnation of the Rolling Stones.

True enough, in true theater fashion, Ayesa was able to parlay his exposure in ?Rock Star? to a rock-star status in British musical theater. In the aftermath of his loss, West End drafted him to play the lead role in ?We Will Rock You.?

The play had already opened successfully in 2003, but Ayesa?s entry last year appears to have revived the production and infused it with a new energy. Now the production is touring worldwide.

Craggily handsome in a rock-star sort of way, Ayesa has stage presence and grace. Although lanky and perhaps even short, he holds himself admirably against a mainly hefty Caucasian cast and prevails chiefly through his confident characterization and passionate singing. He never strikes a false note.

Royal regurgitation

But how could anyone fail with Queen?

If the musical succeeds, the verdict is not unexpected. ?We Will Rock You? is hardly a subtle attempt to regurgitate and recycle the hit records of the seminal British rock band.

The title of the musical itself comes from one of the band?s many several smash records, the anthem of the generation of the 1970s barely out of Woodstock but also barely into the new romantic and utterly materialistic mode of the 1980s that saw the onset of the second British musical invasion.

To date, Queen forms a pillar in the trinity of rock gods, with The Beatles and, perhaps, the Bee Gees.

The Beatles ouvre, of course, has enjoyed periodic reinventions in film and theater across the decades, the latest being the movie ?Across the Universe.?

In contrast, the Bee Gees? legacy appears problematic (as problematic as their appropriation of The Beatles hits in the late 1970s movie ?Sgt. Pepper?s Lonely Hearts Club Band?).

Queen may not have as many hits as the Bee Gees, but their sound is at once mind-blowing and as defiant as The Beatles, if not more so. And, like The Beatles, their songs lend well to reinterpretation and narrativization.

Therefore, the musical ?We Will Rock You? is one whole concept album in spectacle across two hours and 26 hit Queen songs.
The story happens in the future but the plot is not so futuristic; in fact, it?s a bit jaded and hackneyed; it?s about oppression and totalitarianism, and defiance and liberation?and that?s trying to put it in new and revolutionary terms. It?s really ?Matrix? onstage and with loud music.

Rock music banned

The year is 2350, and live music is banned on earth by the Globalsoft Corporation, which feeds the kids with a diet of synthesized pop and controls their lives like control-freak parents.

Ayesa plays Galileo Figaro. We don?t know if that?s his real name. We know, of course, the name comes from ?Bohemian Rhapsody,? Queen?s pastiche tribute to opera, and the play is much like that?a pastiche of references, allusions, even parodies and mockeries.

Written by Ben Elton (who shares authorship with Queen), a comic writer and actor, the play is predictably premised but outlandish, its outlandishness charged to the comic spirit and its rejection of anything serious.

Galileo is a dreamer, a poet, and a rock star who does not know he?s one, because all memories of the rock-and-roll era have been nearly successfully obliterated by Killer Queen (New Zealand?s Annie Crummer), head of Globalsoft who?s bent on wiping out all traces of rock from the face of the earth through her ruthless lieutenant, Khashoggi (Neels Classen, a South African in a cast in which many of the chief roles are played by South Africans).

In his many dreams and daydreams, Galileo catches whiffs and phrases of the old rock-and-roll. With Scaramouche (Sivan Raphaely, also a South African), a spunky girl who cannot fit in the tinsel world of the Teen Queens created by Globalsoft, Galileo stumbles upon Vic (Van Niekerk) and Oz (Carly Graeme), who are part of the Bohemian crowd driven underground by Killer Queen.

But because radar chips have been placed in their brains by Globalsoft, Galileo and Scaramouche unwittingly lead Khashoggi to the lair of the Bohemians, who are captured, brainwashed and exiled to the Seven Seas of Rhye, where barman Pop (played with great comic timing by Malcolm Terrey, also South African) holds an admirable though shoddy and wobbly wisdom about rock?s lore and secrets.

Of course, it?s up to Galileo to rise to the occasion and become the hero who will usher in rock music?s triumphant return. But first he has to find out where Queen buried their instruments, like Arthur drawing out the sword from the stone, finally.

Amorphous songs

Since the musical would be banking on a revival of the Queen repertoire, one might think it would put a more contemporary narrative context to make rhyme and reason of the rather amorphous songs. But instead of situating the story in the probable present, it places the locus on the future, which is not sci-fi but speculative. It?s futuristic but hardly the future.

So who killed rock music in the 24th century? According to the play, it was killed by globalization (?Globalsoft?) with its tendency to make an assembly mill of art and music. This is all well and true, except that even rock music has always been an intrinsic part of globalization, however its proverbial defiant pose against business and the establishment.

Bono may now be called a saint for his advocacy of the environment and other anti-establishment issues, but could there be anything more establishment than being named by Time magazine as Man of the Year and basking in that recognition?

Could there be anything more establishment than Queen front man Freddie Mercury being summoned to a performance by the British royalty at the Royal Albert Hall and, in one of his last public appearances, looking gaunt due to a mysterious disease which later killed him, playing a flamboyant bridegroom to Jane Seymour?s blushing bride in a fashion show that was more show than fashion, since it was common knowledge that Mercury was gay?

Or could there be anything more establishment than Brian May opening Queen Elizabeth?s jubilee concert in 2001 with a guitar rip of ?God Save the Queen? atop Buckingham Palace? Or Roger Taylor in the same show leading the performance of ?Bohemian Rhapsody? in a medley together with young stage performers that seemed a prefigurement and rehearsal of ?We Will Rock You??

Hip-hop may have outdone and displaced rock music in the battle for coruscating lyrics and anti-establishment music, but, in the end, both are in the same boat, where genuine artists and visionaries sit side by side with interlopers and pretenders.

Queen aficionados and other lovers of great rock music know the future of rock. If ?We Will Rock You? is to be believed, the future is not nebulous but solid as a rock. It is commerce and globalization debasing originality and creativity.
For artists and audience, the future will always be something like finding oneself between a rock and a hard place.

?We Will Rock You? runs at the Esplanade Theatre until April 27. Visit www.lunchbox-productions.com. Booking website is www.sistic.com.sg.