The breathless tagline invites us to “relive the day when music brought the world together” and the production’s tone seems set. Taking us behind the scenes of the benefit concert, Live Aid, staged in 1985 and viewed by 1.5 billion people, its tornado of sound is certainly stadium quality. An ensemble of singers pound out 80s classics with vigour. The band is belting. But where is the story, surprise, character study and ethical debate on such celebrity endorsed acts of “charidy”? We may as well be listening to the compilation tape, Now That’s What I Call Music 1985 – or Heart FM on full blast.
Directed by Luke Sheppard, a framing device contrives to secure cross-generational bums on seats, it seems. Eighties kid Suzanne (played by Hope Kenna and Jackie Clune), takes a stroll down memory lane alongside Gen Z’er, Jemma (Naomi Katiyo) who is curious to know the concert’s contemporary relevance. Cue homily upon cliche in John O’Farrell’s book, in which short, trite, snatches of dialogue lead to the next booming number.
The shindig begins when Suzanne persuades pop prophet and sweary curmudgeon, Bob Geldof (Craige Els) to recount how it began. He refuses, until abruptly obliging: “It was a fucking nightmare putting it together,” is one insight. So to the toe-curling Do They Know It’s Christmas? and onwards to Geldof and Midge Ure (Jack Shalloo) trying to make Live Aid happen. That brings all the low stakes drama of tech gremlins, satellite link-ups and press conferences.
Ordinary Joe characters are given a voice – as if this is the production’s act of charity towards the “little people”. Technician Jim (Ashley Campbell) is given stage time. So is behind-the-scenes Marsha (Danielle Steers). Both have astonishing singing voices, albeit pancake-flat characters.
If there is a highpoint, it comes in Fay Fullerton’s costumes, a hybrid blend of New Romantic fashion from then and now. The songs – from the Police’s Every Breath You Take to Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight and almost every other 80s hit imaginable – are at least more than pub impersonations and bring stylised elements: Madonna’s voice channels hints of Britney Spears, Freddie Mercury wears a black vest assemblage rather than the iconic white one from 1985, Margaret Thatcher has long blond locks and talks in song lyrics (I’m Still Standing, etc).
If those are highs, the production also encapsulates the apex of the white saviour complex. Live Aid is cited as the day “rock’n’roll changed the world” in another advertising tagline except history tells us it did no such thing. For its critics, this day sealed a patronising image of Africa as a continent desperate for, and dependent on, western aid.
Some discussion on this is raised, mostly through aid worker Amara (Abiona Omonua) but it is an undigested nod. “I need to bear witness, or something,” says Geldof in Ethiopia, where he sees starving children, and the scene ends with the platitude: “This has to stop.” Ultimately, the aid got there despite Ethiopia’s military regime and civil war, we are told: “It worked.”
The focus is firmly on feels and feel-good tunes. The tone is ecstatic. The result is a show knee-deep in celebratory nostalgia. A jukebox musical gracing the stage of the Old Vic is a puzzle too. It will no doubt capture a West End crowd but what will the venue lose in the process?
It ends with breathless words on the importance of organising. We have new crises today, says Geldof, but these can be faced if people are brought together. It sounds like another hollow tagline.
• At the Old Vic, London until 30 March
• This article was amended on 14 February 2024. An earlier version said that In the Air Tonight was by Genesis. In fact it was a solo track by Phil Collins.
