Tag Archives: sydney lyric theatre

5 Questions with Keane Fletcher and Ruverashe Ngwenya

Posted in Suzy's 5 Questions by
Keane Fletcher

Keane Fletcher

Ruverashe Ngwenya: Tell us about your role in We Will Rock You.
Keane Fletcher: My role in We Will Rock You is the Swing, which means I understudy all of the male ensemble members and have to be ready to go on for them at a moment’s notice. I also understudy two of the lead roles in the show, Galileo and Khashoggi.

Tell us about your favourite experience when you were touring the world with the Ten Tenors?
It’s hard to pick just one favourite experience with The Ten Tenors. I spent six years touring the world with them and in that time I got to visit so many beautiful countries and sing in some amazing venues. Performing for Oprah on Hamilton Island’s Whitehaven Beach was pretty amazing, as was singing for 60,000 people at the opening of the UEFA Cup in Warsaw, Poland. My time spent with them was an incredible experience and one I’ll never forget.

If you could invite six people, living or dead, to a dinner party at your house, who would they be?
Amy Winehouse, David Bowie, the writer Lorrie Moore, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (they could carpool) and, of course, Freddie Mercury. The world’s best dinner party followed by world’s worst hangover!

What’s your favourite holiday destination?
New Orleans baby! I’ve been lucky enough to go a few times, once for work but mainly for pleasure, and I still can’t get over how otherworldly and exciting it is. So many famous writers, playwrights and musicians have lived there and you can feel the impact the city must have had on them. There’s music pouring out of every corner, amazing food, so much voodoo and superstition, and you can drink on the street. What more could you want?

What is your favourite Queen song and why?
Bohemian Rhapsody, no question. It’s the first Queen song I remember listening to as a kid and so I can’t separate the nostalgia I feel for it from my general love for it musically, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Great music usually marks a moment in time for people and I think that’s why people love Queen so much, because their songs have become ingrained in all of our lives. If you hear Bohemian Rhapsody come on the radio and aren’t singing along by “thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening” then there’s something wrong with you.

Ruverashe Ngwenya

Ruverashe Ngwenya

Keane Fletcher: Tell us about your role in We Will Rock You.
Ruverashe Ngwenya: My role in We Will Rock You is quite a versatile fun one! I start off the show playing the Gaga teacher/spy for Khashoggi and his “army”. I am very much a part of the law enforcement to ensure the rules and regulations are being followed by the students. I also am a part of the amazing ensemble and sing a lot of amazing music along with the cast. I also get to play the feisty diva, Bohemian Aretha, which is a lot of fun and a huge contrast from the Gaga teacher. I also understudy the role of Killer Queen.

You played the violin as a child. Do you still play in your spare time?
Yes, I did play the violin as a child! Wow thanks for the reminder haha. No I don’t still play – the violin was more like an introduction to music for me. It was how I learnt to read music, pick up the theory side of music and broaden my horizons as a musician, eventually finding my passion in singing and performance.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party at your house, who would they be?
They would have to be my grandmother who passed away when I was 9 along with Nelson Mandela and Michael Jackson.

What is the holiday destination you’ve always wanted to go to?
That is an impossible question to answer! There are so many places in the world I want to and WILL travel to (hahaha) mainly most of Africa. I really want to explore the continent and all its cultures and customs thoroughly. South America is high on the list! Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Argentina, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and definitely India when I’m older later in life – that’s the main list!

What is your favourite Queen song and why?
My favourite Queen song would have to be We Are The Champions – I absolutely love singing it! The song fills you with so much pride and happiness. When you sing it you just feel great! So uplifting!

Keane Fletcher and Ruverashe Ngwenya can be seen in We Will Rock You, the Queen musical.
Dates: 20 Apr – 26 Jun, 2016
Venue: Sydney Lyric Theatre

Dates: 10 Jul – 7 Aug, 2016
Venue: QPAC, Brisane

Dates: 30 Aug – 9 Oct, 2016
Venue: Regent Theatre, Melbourne

Review: We Will Rock You (Sydney Lyric Theatre)

Posted in Theatre by

wewillrockyouVenue: Sydney Lyric Theatre (Sydney NSW), Apr 20 – Jun 26, 2016
Music & Lyrics: Queen
Story & Script: Ben ELton
Director: Ben Elton
Cast: Erin Clare, Casey Donovan, Jaz Flowers, Gareth Keegan, Brian Mannix, Thern Reynolds, Simon Russell
Image by Jeff Busby

Theatre review
There is a scene in which the Bohemians declare that they do not know what rock and roll is. Ben Elton, writer and director of We Will Rock You evidently suffers from that same predicament. The production showcases some of the greatest rock tunes ever written, but in the interest of the musical theatre genre, builds characters and a narrative around them that unfortunately serve no real purpose except to dilute and dumb down the genius of Freddie Mercury and his Queen legacy.

Elton’s show features an endless series of dad jokes, and a tenuous context of anti-establishment that reads more like anti-progress and narrow minded, greying conservatism. It attempts to make jokes of pop culture icons such as Australian Idol, without acknowledging the fact that the strongest performer in its cast had been a prominent winner of that very franchise. It uses names like Britney Spears and Katy Perry as punchlines, as though we would all share its appetite in humiliating those women and obliterating their undeniable achievements. The show finds it energy from the music it is authorised to use, but unlike the musicians it attempts to pay tribute to, We Will Rock You is spiritless and banal.

The story is yet another take on the messianic allegory. Like Jesus from the Bible or Neo from The Matrix, Galileo is sent from the heavens to save us all. Whether or not one is concerned with the political incorrectness, and tastelessness, of creating opportunities for another white man to deliver us from evil, the trope is frankly, very desperately tired. As though its format is not already archaic enough, a female “lead character” is included for no discernible reason except to provide Galileo with a love interest, presumably to assure us of his hetero-masculinity in case, god forbid, Freddie Mercury’s gayness would befall him by association.

It is a well-performed show nonetheless, with an excellent band, and a strong cast that traverses the rock and musical genres effortlessly. The aforementioned Idol winner Casey Donovan steals the show as the villainous Killer Queen, winning us over to the dark side where everything is much more appealing and infinitely more rock and roll; very ironic indeed. Brian Mannix, frontman of 1980s rock bad Uncanny X-Men, is also on hand to bring hints of authentic flavour to a stage that is ostensibly tailored for a “family-friendly” type crowd. They may all be stars that we see having their glitzy moment in We Will Rock You, but it is certainly not rock heaven that they have taken us.

wwww.wewillrockyou.com.au