West End musicals - big shows with huge casts, flashy costumes, breath-taking sets and... music! Music that challenges you! Music that stirs your soul! Music that tells you a story in its melodies and soaring, swooping notes! Music that lifts drama to sublime heights and makes a mundane play into a glorious aural, visual journey into the unknown, where every nerve in your body is set alight and your very being is inspired and uplifted!
Let's see what we've had so far:
Abba in Mama Mia
Queen in We Will Rock You
Madness in Our House
Rod Stewart's in Tonight's the Night
Boy George's in Taboo
The Beatles in All You Need Is Love
They're not so much musicals as "tribute acts with some tacked-on story to fill the gaps between scene-changes and songs." And now... Boney M is joining the ranks of West End travesties with none other than disco diva Harvey of So Solid Crew in the lead as Sunny, "a young man who lives for his music." In this case, the music he lives for is not the hard as nails hip hop he touts with So Solid but instead, upbeat Boney M disco hits like Brown Girl in the Ring and By The Rivers of Babylon. If you're feeling the effects of intense incredulity about this new musical due to hit our West End next year, then brace yourself... it gets worse.
It's set in "mulitcultural London" which in West End standards means "it's got a black guy in the lead role, and our set features a backdrop with the London Eye painted on it". It also recycles the very, very tired Romeo and Juliet "star-crossed lovers" story line which nobody seems to have noticed was annihilated in song and modern dress in 1961 when the Jets and the Sharks high-kicked their way through West Side Story.
When will they learn? When will this madness end? Won't somebody make it stop before Take That - the Musical starts auditioning for the Gary Barlow role?
Daddy Cool, the Boney M musical is due to open at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End in May 2006. Warning: may contain songs by Milli Vanilli and disco hits "re-interpreted with contemporary musical influences." .
