Istvan Dugalin ➤

Paige Foskett, Callum Lurie, Caleb Ajao and Laurence Champagne in We Will Rock You | Photo by Dahlia Katz

As an ostentatious tribute concert, We Will Rock You, presented by Mirvish, is fine. It’s Queen, so the songs are great. There’s some cool visuals too. I appreciated the 3-D cinematic effect of Yohan Gingras’s projected video backdrops interacting with Jean-Marc Saumier’s foreground scenic elements to conjure rather striking dystopian landscapes—from the towering and oppressive electronic technocracy of the Global Soft civilization to the rusted, burning desolation of the wastelands. Also, there are these light-studded rings that descend from the rafters to swivel about like sentient robots, throwing hypnotic beams down—those are pretty high-tech and snazzy.

I grew weary of each new spectacle rather quickly, however, because there’s almost nothing compellingly human going inside any of these environments. As a frame to hang it’s Queen tribute upon, Ben Elton’s story and script are flimsy at best, actively cringe-inducing at worst. It lacks any nuance, subtext or genuine lyricism and the constant references to rock and pop lyrics dropped into the dialogue are tedious.

So, perhaps you’re curious what I mean by Global Soft and the wastelands. In a hokey dystopian conceit, this posits a future where instruments and original music have been outlawed. Global Soft is the tyrannical corporation-government-technology that rules over its brainwashed citizens. The figurehead is a sentient AI, Killer Queen (Maggie Lacasse), with her fascist-coded henchman, Khashoggi (Patrick Olafson). Galileo (Callum Lurie) and Scaramouche (Paige Foskett) are renegade students who escape to the wastelands, a decrepit area outside the city limits, where they hook up with the Bohemians, a commune of rock n’ roll enthusiasts awaiting their prophet-saviour to lead the rebellion. 

This is pulling from so many dystopian narratives featuring defiant groups of underground freedom fighters. These Bohemians have held on to fragments of old lyrics and the have adopted the personae of a variety of music icons. It would be sweet and touching, of course, if it weren’t so clumsily executed. 

Later, as they gather a small army of like-minded rockers, we understand more fully the glow-sticks we’ve been given and the huge banks of rock n’ roll lighting aimed directly at us. We are the hundreds of kindred souls. And this is where we are meant to give in to the moment, to sing out hearts out. Now, I have been surrounded by an audience of strangers who suddenly find themselves bonded and enraptured by a phenomenon, but here I just felt like a buzz-kill.   

The key structural failing is how the songs are used. In this story about fighting the good fight against the encroachment of AI on our creative human impulses, it’s thematically confusing to have the villainous figures of the story passionately performing the very Queen songs they consider dangerous. It would make more sense to have them only communicate in a generic, soulless mode. I don’t buy any of this because both the good and bad guys here are all rocking out so very righteously! Make it make sense!

Director Steve Bolton’s production has lot of neat visual ideas effectively realized on stage and that seem, at first, epic and immersive, only to lose their lustre as scenes progress without any conflict or even contrast. People are singing their hearts out though! My favourite performance here is from Caleb Ajao as Brit (named after Britney Spears, it’s a whole thing). He is the one character on stage that I felt even an inkling of emotion for. He’s got a certain wild, authentic energy that charmed me.

Not even “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which has been built up to mythic proportions over the course of the show, really roused me. The only time I felt goosebumps was during Lurie and Foskett’s performance of “Under Pressure.” It’s one of my favourite Queen songs, but more importantly, it is the only one that seems emotionally well-integrated into the context of the story.

The Graceland standoff is pretty lame. It’s far too naive a concept for all the build up. It is essentially a rock n’ roll version of a Care Bear Stare that defeats the evil. That would be fine in a well-crafted children’s fable, but this doesn’t even achieve the sort of nuance and complexity of the Care Bears Movie, let alone a proper dystopian meditation on oppression and the human spirit.

The Queen songs are excellent, of course, and very well sung!

We Will Rock You
November 28, 2025 to January 18, 2026
CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre
(244 Victoria Street)
2 hours, 40 minutes (with intermission)

Paige Foskett in We Will Rock You | Photo by Dahlia Katz