Killer Queen: Fierce young talent defying the laws of gravity

First there are the goosebumps, triggered by young, eminently talented Matt Blerk strutting onto stage, his white vest, yellow jacket and purpose-grown moustache screaming “Freddie Mercury”.

With determined swagger, Blerk marches towards the audience, poses, turns on an intoxicating smile, and as he starts to stomp and clap to a practised rhythm, radiates a kind of giddy-making energy that whips the entire theatre into a “We Will Rock You” froth.

Then, as he’s joined by more than 50 musical theatre students, he summons the spirit of one of the greatest rock bands the world has ever known.

For the next two hours what happens in that theatre is seldom short of heart-quickening.

It’s loud, it’s sexy, it’s exhilarating, and the vivacity is off the charts. It’s Killer Queen, a dance show celebrating not only the rich variety of Queen’s music, but using some fantastic, frequently fantastical choreography to explore deep inside the inner meaning of the songs and get at the emotional underbelly of the band’s legendary lead singer.

Not only does this young cast rock you, but they give you everything they’ve got – whether it’s a sequence that pulses with dizzying clubland beats or one that leans into the gentler, more technical requirements of romantic ballet, the dancing covers a wide gamut of styles, genres and influences.

One moment they’re showing off their tap or neoclassical ballet skills, the next instant it’s some extraordinarily high-energy, ultra-contemporary stuff that spans psychedelic rave and ballroom posing. And sometimes the glitchy, scratchy, hardcore doef-doef-doef beats in the vibrant remixes transform familiar tunes into throbbing dancefloor anthems – who can possibly resist dancing?

Some numbers are designed to be light, frothy and lots of fun, while other sequences – particularly those that touch on Mercury’s troubled personal life or work to express the awful impact of HIV/Aids – unapologetically lean into darker moods, becoming quite elegiac at times.

Occasionally, the pumping energy is turned down completely so you can almost hear the heartbeats of the dancers, their wilder physicality transforming into something more low-key and tender. And there a moments, too, when they graciously reference iconic 20th-century choreographers to interpret an emotion or capture a sensibility with such subtlety and heartfelt conviction.

Pleasingly, these performers manage these extremes, along with everything in between, and they do so with tremendous aplomb.

And there are other uses of the body, too, that take your breath away in more unexpected ways – there’s the remarkable ingenuity at the start of Don’t Stop Me Now, for example, when Blerk, summoning yet another aspect of Mercury’s artistry, momentarily plays a piano cleverly constructed from a muddle of humans.

Along with such whimsical innovations, it’s gratifying how often the choreography brings an unexpected twist to a song. Fat Bottomed Girls, for example, has been turned into a wonderful Wild West number sung complete with singing, dancing cowgirls – and cowboys who turn up clad in Stetsons and the naughtiest cowhide chaps. What unfolds is an absolute hoot!

And there’s Jared Schaedler’s sci-fi-inspired choreography for Another One Bites the Dust which not only seems to subtly riff Michael Jackson’s legendary Thriller music video but sees the dancers intermittently transform into robot-like creatures before the movement language evolves, again and again, so that the entire number feels like a choreographically complex journey across some imaginary universe.

The show is carefully constructed from the work of some of the country’s best choreographers, which ensures that the audience experiences variety and depth while the students are stretched.

Responsible for a lot of the choreography, Duane Alexander has crafted a fantastic rendition of Crazy Little Thing in which four distinct Freddie Mercury personas are gorgeously resurrected in the shape of four distinctive cameo performances – these guys sing, they dance and they have an inordinate amount of fun paying tribute to the rock star’s multitudinous stage personalities.

While their dancing is delectable, these youngsters also get to show off their singing talent. The arrangements of Queen’s songs – some known, some obscure – are unexpected and imaginative, and the vocals brilliant.

There’s an especially captivating all-boys rendition of Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy performed with such an easy touch, such good humour and a palpable human connection between the singers – you can’t help but get carried away by their harmonies.

It’s not just singing and dancing, though. Although there’s no tidy story or guided biographic account of Mercury and his band, you pick up the loose narrative strands as a kind of feeling, an impulse of empathy for the man and what Queen meant to its fans and to the world.

The show alludes to plenty of the details that peppered Mercury’s life: the confusion around his sexual identity, the promiscuity and finally the terrible disease that killed him long before his time. Some more pointed historic information is conveyed in audio-visual snippets projected during several of the lengthier costume changes. It’s a show that wants to thrill you, but also encourages you to feel.

It would be impossible to mention every performer who stands out in the show – there are simply so many inspired and inspiring moments – and plenty of sequences that will make you wish you were young again, Zimmer frame and dodgy knees be damned.

These young stars make it all look so easy – it’s their pizzazz, the delight they take in doing what they love, and their willingness to bend to the demands of even the most complex, outlandish and downright difficult choreography (and sometimes also executing sequences that the hoi polloi might deem uncool). Never mind the sheer stamina and will to keep going… Witnessing all of this unerring commitment is deeply satisfying.

It’s a big, extravagant production and it really seems to give everyone in it a chance to shine. The show is cast from across all years of the school’s academic programme, which means that sharing the stage with students who, one year from now, will be smoking-hot professionals, are first-years whose last big gig was a high school musical – and yet, they are all in various ways ridiculously adept. DM

Killer Queen is showing at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town until 20 June. Due to high demand, additional matinée performances have been added to the run.