Enraged by the British government charging the standard 15% sales tax on tickets for Live Aid, Bob Geldof (Craige Els) bullies his way into a meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (sparky Julie Atherton). Ever intransigent, she responds with dialogue lifted from Bernie Taupin and Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” before they argue with each other unexpectedly as a rap. All good, except that this first instance of anything remotely surprising, let alone witty, comes an hour into the new musical now playing in London at the Old Vic, “Just for One Day.” That’s symbolic of this boisterously played but problematic musical about Live Aid/Band Aid: tremendous musical performances, shame about the book.
A docu-jukebox musical that lists 37 song/music credits—from Bowie’s “Heroes” to The Beatles’ “Let It Be” — “Just for One Day” is the behind-the-scenes story of how a personal response to 1984’s devastating Ethiopian famine became a (literal and metaphorical) record-making and record-breaking worldwide charity event. That, at least, is the intention. But to misquote another lyric, “It ain’t what you do, it’s the agreement of the rights holders.” In this case, Bob Geldof.
The latter has clearly given bookwriter John O’Farrell (“Something Rotten!”) plenty of insider information, including the content of his private conversations with Thatcher. But it also means that Geldof — usually driven, angry or swearing, mostly all three — remains front and center, despite O’Farrell and director Luke Sheppard’s useful attempts to widen the story.
Knowing they have to straddle both audiences who remember and love it all and those born in the four decades that have followed, O’Farrell and Sheppard (“& Juliet”) have opted for something not quite a show, more a show-and-tell. Literally so, since actors in the 26-strong cast, playing everyone from music legends and technicians to record-shop staff and audience members, almost always face front to tell us their memories before cutting back to tiny snippet-like scenes illustrating how things happened.
So far, so documentary. Which would be fine but for the fact that, through no fault of the highly focused cast, the non-stop, tension-free exposition all seems to come with built-in exclamation points. To add drama! And up the energy! About how life-changingly marvelous it all was!
By way of necessary contrast, characters are intermittently interrogated by a skeptical, representative, Gen Z woman named Jemma (Naomi Katiyo), who sums up the enterprise as “old white guys taking a day off from snorting cocaine.” She’s there to provide a much-needed 2024 perspective on something which, though invaluable, now comes with “white savior” problems barely discussed at the time. Were she more of a character and less a mouthpiece for political positioning, that could have worked.
Two important things, however, are never in doubt. Firstly: the production’s good intentions. Although the dialogue for the sole Ethiopian aid worker Amara (Abiona Omonua) is earnest, she and the production design (notably projections by Andrzej Goulding and lighting designer Howard Hudson) convey Ethiopia via restrained suggestion rather than anything approaching tasteless displays of extreme suffering. And against all odds, the moment in which Geldof enters a tent in which children are dying — he’s caught alone in a tiny shaft of light against total darkness — is both effective and affecting.
Secondly, the musical presentation is as exhilaratingly punchy as it is smart. Best of all, with the necessary exceptions of Els’ ideally impatient Geldof and his creative partner Midge Ure (portrayed and superbly sung by Jack Shalloo), direct impersonations and slavish copies of performers are banished. Freddie Love has a whale of a time suggesting Freddie Mercury, and someone needs to build a show around Danielle Steele’s vocal power. Indeed, with uniformly powerful voices, the entire cast conjure elements of their famous counterparts but reinvent vocals that hit the emotional spot.
They’re aided by top-flight work by musical supervisor and orchestrator Matthew Brind, who consistently rearranges megahits in theatrically inventive ways, aided by Ebony Molina’s punchy choreography. Like the costumes, they play to both past and present. “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” gets a welcome surprise treatment while The Police’s “Message in a Bottle,” slowed down and rethought for full choir over the white-hot, six-piece band, and a haunting, epic arrangement of Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” ignite the audience.
The final flaccid, post-concert section, over-stuffed with generalized homilies and beset with multiple endings, points up the show’s fatal flaw: by trying to please everyone, it rarely fully satisfies. Audiences content to overlook the naivety of the writing and simply relive their memories may flock, but it’s not going to be an easy sell.
