Theater review: ‘We Will Rock You’ might not

At the inevitable end of “We Will Rock You” on Tuesday, when the Des Moines Civic Center audience was gamely waving their arms back and forth, I started to wonder if at least one of the songs was written specifically for the show.

“I’ve paid my dues / time after time. / I’ve done my sentence / but committed no crime.”

But if we really are the champions, it turns out we do have time for losers — specifically 2 hours and 15 minutes, seven times this week. This touring jukebox of Queen hits makes Abba’s “Mamma Mia!” look like Masterpiece Theatre.

Yes, the music is good, but not nearly good enough to make up for the cartoonish acting and the inane script, which creator Ben Elton seems to have written by shredding a karaoke catalog and gluing the scraps willy-nilly into a notebook. Some of the conversations borrow almost entirely from song lyrics, which may sound like a good idea but isn’t.

“I like big butts and I cannot lie.”

“Really? Do ya think I’m sexy?”

“Well, I really, really, really wanna zig-a-zig ahh!”

Somehow these exchanges are supposed to tell a tale set in the future, where a sinister corporate overlord called Globalsoft has outlawed all forms of music except bland bubblegum pop. But wouldn’t you know it? Two young rebels named Galileo (Brian Justin Crum) and Scaramouche (Ruby Lewis) fall in with a group of Bohemians who draw inspiration from mysterious artifacts they discover in an ancient Hard Rock Café.

(See? “Mamma Mia!” is starting to look pretty smart.)

Both Crum and Lewis have solid gold sets of pipes, which they rev up for big dance numbers like “Somebody to Love” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The skinny, strung-out Bohemian leader (Ryan Knowles) has a great voice, too — the sort of souped-up bass you hear from hard-rock radio DJs – but a little of his antics goes a long way.

I also liked one of the villain’s (Jacqueline Arnold) takes on “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” but don’t ask me how it fits into the story or why all of her back-up dancers were wearing kinky, French maid lingerie and waving pink feather dusters. Or why, for that matter, none of them fit the song’s title.

And that’s the thing: Nothing about the show fit. Viewers who wanted a rock concert were likely frustrated by all the chatter in between each song. Those who wanted an actual story, on the other hand, had to wait through all 24 wedged-in songs.

The giddy septuagenarian sitting next to me would probably tell you otherwise, as would many of the others who stood in Tuesday’s almost full house for two (deliberately orchestrated) standing ovations. They clapped to the beat and laughed whenever an actor shouted a joke about something or someone they recognized. Britney Spears! Gangnam Style! Twerking!

But really, this show should have been an optional add-on to the Broadway series rather than one of the main five, like the noisy Green Day vehicle “American Idiot,” which visited for just two days in January. Both noisy shows try to stick it to the Man, which is hard to do in a slickly produced musical. In fact, the audience waving its arms in unison Tuesday looked a lot like the consumers the show’s fictional overlords had brainwashed.

Am I overthinking this one? Probably. But underthinking it would be hard to do.

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