Breaking Baz: Live Aid Musical Blows The Roof Off London’s Old Vic As Bob Geldof Actor Curses His Way To Stardom
The producers and key creatives behind the Live Aid musical Just for One Day, which officially opened Tuesday night at the Old Vic, have banded together to ensure that 10 percent of every ticket sold goes to the Band Aid Charitable Trust established by Bob Geldof and others to help relieve the hunger and poverty in Ethiopia.
The trust also can expect more funds pouring into its coffers if and when the show transfers from the Old Vic into the West End — and possibly to Broadway, where its capitalization will be many times more than the approximately ￡6 million ($7.6 million) it cost to develop and stage in London.
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The former Boomtown Rats frontman who spearheaded the landmark Live Aid mega rock concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London and at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985, featuring the biggest rock acts of the time — David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Queen and Tina Turner, to name but a few — has negotiated a deal that guarantees the trust will be the biggest benefactor both pre and post-recoupment.
If audiences have as good a time as your columnist and his wife did at a recent preview performance, then the sun won’t be setting on Just for One Day any time soon.
Who knew that one would get an opportunity to see former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher going head-to-head with Geldof? Dynamite.
Worth noting that executives from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s LW Theatres also were in attendance, and there are rumors that they’ve already earmarked one of the organization’s six West End houses for a Just for One Day transfer.
I covered Live Aid at Wembley — an unbelievably amazing period because Bruce Springsteen had played the same venue on the weekend prior — and when I watched Just for One Day, it was as if I’d been hurled back in time, even though the story of that day is seen through the prism of “the ordinary people being heroes, the people who put it on,” as the show’s book writer John O’Farrell put it.
“I always felt that we should acknowledge those people as well as the pop stars — the people working the lights, the truckers … all the people who volunteered to do so much,” O’Farrell said.
“I thought that was a better way of doing it, also a more democratic way of doing it,” he told me when we chatted during a break from watching the show’s director, Luke Sheppard (& Juliet), making changes to the “melting pot of stories’” with his cast ahead of its official first night.
“It’s such a big, epic thing, such a massive day in history, so doing it justice means a lot to us,” said Sheppard, who has another show, The Little Big Things, playing across town @sohoplace. Sheppard’s also signed on to direct a new version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express and has a hoped-for transfer to Broadway of Rob Madge’s My Son’s A Queer (But What Can You Do?). He also will direct the new Paddington stage musical that’s being developed by Sonia Friedman Productions, Studiocanal and Eliza Lumley Productions for Universal Music UK. The Paddington movies were produced by Studiocanal and Heyday Films.
Sheppard told me it was imperative that Just for One Day not be like a tribute show because “we’ve never been interested in doing lookalikes” but “what we are interested in is continuing the spirits of David Bowie or Freddie Mercury in the hands of a new generation.”
He added that the show’s about “giving a platform to artists who have extraordinary voices of their own right and a whole new take on these songs and in a new interpretation.”
The structure of O’Farrell’s book marries tales of those who were there with stories of today’s young questioning what Live Aid was for.
As an author of historical and political books, O’Farrell knew that a musical about Live Aid was a story with high stakes.
“I’m very close to this material — I know immediately the context of every song, every bit of politics and the characters of the day,” he explained.
O’Farrell noted that when he was approached by lead producer Jamie Wilson (the Mrs. Doubtfire Musical) to write the script, both were adamant that “we couldn’t make it a big Bob Geldof hero story.”
They found that they had an unlikely ally in Geldof himself.
When O’Farrell visited Geldof at his home in Kent and was asked to pitch the show’s story to him, the singer responded viscerally. “He said, ‘That’s shite … it shouldn’t be the Bob Geldof story,’” O’Farrell recalled.
Producer Wilson said that Geldof has been beyond collaborative on the project. “It’s been a real hard slog getting everyone to say yes” to clearing rights to their songs, Wilson said.
Even Queen said no to an initial request to use three songs, “and Geldof had to write a letter to Roger Taylor and Brian May” to help persuade them otherwise.
Wilson smiled and said that May watched recordings of footage from some of the three workshops “and said, ‘Don’t take three, take four! You have to get ‘We Will Rock You’ in there as well,’” to join “Radio Ga Ga,” “We Are the Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Wilson said that Bowie’s estate was the first to give permission. It’s fun to see how his “Heroes” and “Rebel Rebel” have been interpolated into the show.
Just for One Day boasts a terrific ensemble that incudes such solid West End names as Julie Atherton, Ashley Campbell, Jackie Clune, Olly Dobson, Craige Els, James Hameed, Joel Montague, Jack Shalloo, Danielle Steers and Rhys Wilkinson and some, though not all, who are new to me. They are Jason Battersby, Joe Edgar, Jo Foster, Collette Guitart, Naomi Katiyo, Hope Kenna, Freddie Love, Abiona Omonua, Emily Ooi and Tamara Tare, with all casting by Stuart Burt and choreography by Ebony Molina.
Echoing what Sheppard observed earlier, these are artists with extraordinary voices accompanied by musicians Patrick Hurley, Rachel Murphy, Nathaniel Adamson, Joe Evans, Matt Isaacs and Kodi Pham under the supervision of Matthew Brind — who did the musical supervision and orchestration — and musical director Patrick Hurtley with voice coach Charlie Hughes-D’Aeth.
The joint rocked when I was there, and I was struck that the audience — except for one or two dopes — didn’t join in singing until they were given permission to do so. One of the tasks Sheppard was undertaking during my rehearsal visit was to find a way to signal to the audience that it’s OK to join in at one particular point.
Trips to several musicals have been ruined because some audience members think that we’ve paid to hear them sing along with the show.
One look from Els, who said his portrait of Geldof “is the mild version,” should put such folk on their best behavior.
The trick, he felt, to portraying Geldof “is that he’s such a fascinating human being … full of contradictions but also super-intelligent, huge heart, so erudite. He doesn’t sit on the fence either. If there’s an opinion to be had, Bob will have it.” So when an actor’s trying ”to be Bob, you’ve got to bring the passion and the ardor that comes with it.”
Geldof attended rehearsals 70 percent of the time and was more interested in Els capturing “the essence” of him and less interested in “the spitting image of himself.”
Els told me that Geldof also was at pains to mention that he couldn’t have done it without all the other people involved, saying, “He’s very modest in that regard.”
Importantly, Els said that he has tried to balance the argumentative, and perhaps the curmudgeonly, side of Geldof with someone “who’s passionate and someone who believes in something and someone who’s cheeky.”
In my run-ins and conversations with Geldof, it’s been a badge of honor to be F-bombed by him.
Els joked that he’s never sworn in a production “as much as I swear in this one.”
However, he hasn’t kept track of the number of times he has uttered the F-bomb. “I’ll have to count them one day,” he said.
And for heaven’s sake, hats off to Geldof. The problems in Ethiopia haven’t gone away. “He spent his Christmas over there,” Els said. “He never walked away.”
The big thematic element of Just for One Day, Sheppard suggested, “is about bringing people together” and “about how when you put your mind to something when you do bring people together, then you can make change happen.”
The old and the new faces that I saw seated around me at the Old Vic watching the show suggests that Sheppard’s on to something.
It’s great to salute heroes, even if it’s just for one day.
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