The Music of Queen show at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre on Friday night — a show-tune-style rendition of the British band’s songs — was a show of two halves.
The first part of the performance featured several of the band’s hits but also a number of songs that probably only the Queen obsessives in the audience would have known. That meant it took a little while before everyone fully got into the proceedings, despite dazzling vocal performances from the four West End stars. Backing them was the UAE symphony orchestra, who sometimes battled to be heard over the rock band also on stage. I could see flautists on the big screen, but really couldn’t hear them.
The musicians had their moment in the second half of the show, when the more orchestral songs by the band — original line-up Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor, Brian May and John Deacon — gave airtime to the banks of violins, flutes and bicycle-bell-players (there’s really no other way to end I Want To Ride My Bicycle, is there?). Here’s where The Show Must Go On, These Are The Days Of Our Lives, and Who Wants To Live Forever took on goosebump-inducing effects.
Vocalists Peter Eldridge, James Wooten, Jenna Lee-James and Julie Stark, who flew in from the US and UK, are members of the We Will Rock You cast — a musical based on the music of the British band — and their West End/Broadway-style vocals are different from Mercury’s, but no less brilliant, with plenty of theatrical feats, as well as snippets of information about their songs they were able to sing. Most memorable were Eldridge’s Don’t Stop Me Now, and Stark’s version of A Kind Of Magic, which got the audience’s hands in the air; with a little coercion, those sitting in the grandstand seats got on their feet to boogie to Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
