Jamie Wilson Productions & The Old Vic/Just For One Day, The Live Aid Musical, book by John O’Farrell, a jukebox musical/varied playlist, choreographed by Ebony Molina, music direction by Patrick Hurley, directed by Luke Sheppard, CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, closes Mar. 15. Tickets here.
If you were on this earth on Saturday, July 13, 1985, even if you weren’t a fan of rock and pop music, you knew about Live Aid. How could you not? The publicity for the event was monumental, its importance trumpeted to the world.
Live Aid was the name given to two benefit concerts to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. They took place simultaneously at London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John. F. Kennedy Stadium, featuring the biggest names in music. The format had the acts alternate between the two countries, and the concerts lasted over 16 hours.
It is estimated that the televised Live Aid raised around £50 million for Ethiopian relief, and was seen by 3.5 billion people in 150 countries, which was nearly 40% of the world’s population.
It is the events leading up to the mounting of the Live Aid concerts that are the unlikely subject of the British musical Just For One Day.
Background
This is the kind of feelgood show that will appeal to everyone. John O’Farrell’s book is both emotional and funny at the same time, and as well as being a seminal part of musical history, the making of Live Aid is a damn good story.
And then, of course, there is the music, featuring the greatest hits from the 70s and 80s.
Director Luke Sheppard and producer Jamie Wilson thought up the idea of a Live Aid musical in 2021, and brought in O’Farrell to create the book. Their intention was to showcase the joy and the magic that surrounded the event, as well as focusing on the hard-working people who made Live Aid happen. The show debuted at The Old Vic in 2024, and Toronto marks its North American premiere.
Characters
Central to Just For One Day is the Irish rock star Bob Geldof of the band the Boomtown Rats (Craige Els), and be warned, his speech is liberally peppered with the F-word. He’s now Sir Bob Geldof, having been knighted for his philanthropy.
To tell the story of Live Aid, O’Farrell has created Suzanne, a present-day mother and Live Aid fanatical superfan (Melissa Jaques), who tries to convey the greatness of the concerts to her unimpressed daughter Jemma (Fayth Ifil).
The cast contains both real life and fictional characters.
As Suzanne narrates the story, we follow Young Suzanne (Hope Kenna) in 1985, and Tim (Jack Michael Stacey), her coworker at the bookstore where she is a part-timer. Geldof joins Suzanne and Jemma to tell his central part in creating Live Aid.
In 1984, Geldof was watching television and saw BBC journalist Michael Buerk’s harrowing documentary on the Ethiopian famine, the first to bring the crisis to public attention. Geldof was shocked and came up with the idea of writing a Christmas song featuring a slew of famous stars to raise money for Ethiopia.
Geldof was clearly a force of nature and bullied people to get what he wanted. For example, he badgered Scottish singer Midge Ure (George Ure) of the band Ultravox to cowrite the song Do They Know It’s Christmas? They called their enterprise Band Aid and brought in Marsha (Kelly Agbowu) to produce their single. This little charity song went to number one on the charts and raised buckets of money.
From there, the idea morphed into mounting the giant Live Aid concerts featuring the stars of both the USA and Britain. Along with Marsha and Ure, Geldof corralled sound technician Jim (Ashley Samuels), concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith (Tim Mahendran) and entertainment lawyer John Kennedy (Jake Small) to help plan the event.
The cast also features the character of Amara (Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky), the Ethiopian aid worker who is facing the horrors of the famine, and, would you believe, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Julie Atherton)? Yes, Geldof even confronts the leader of the government.
Okay, the plot line is hokey, but the characters are interesting. The main trajectory is to follow Geldof as he browbeats his way to making the concerts a reality and this does capture attention.
The cast is wonderful, and I mean everyone, with the dynamic Els taking centre stage. His go-for-broke performance is the glue that holds everything together. The energy just pours off the stage, and the six-man rock band really lays it on.
The Production
I’m not quite sure exactly what Ebony Molina’s choreography is doing, but it’s fun to watch because of its physically demanding, high-octane, vigorous output. Perhaps evoking or mirroring the music?
Soutra Gilmour’s clever set features bleachers in front of the band ,and the cast and ensemble sit there if they are not performing. These bleachers conjure up the image of the stadiums. Small set pieces like chairs and desks are easily pushed on and off, while Andrzej Goulding’s atmospheric videos and projections fill in the back and side walls as needed.
Howard Hudson’s lighting is particularly effective in pin-spotting the action, while Fay Fullerton’s smart costumes cross two time periods and convey the fashion statements of both.
The Music
Arranger/orchestrator Matthew Brind has ingeniously blended together the disparate music into a seamless score. As a bit of trivia, every song in the show was performed at Live Aid.
The songs mirror who the characters are, or what they are thinking, or what’s going on. For example, the musical opens with the entire company singing the very apt David Bowie’s Heroes, and it’s a line from this song which gives the show its title.
The overbearing Harvey Goldsmith comes in on Pinball Wizard from the rock opera Tommy. Margaret Thatcher warbles Stop Your Sobbing, made famous by the Kinks. Amara introduces melancholy with Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, while Jemma sings Pete Townsend’s My Generation.
The ending is particularly moving, with Lennon/McCartney’s Let It Be morphing into Tears Are Not Enough, the song that a superstar group of Canadian singers recorded in 1985 as this country’s contribution to raise money for famine relief. Adding this song to the score is a thoughtful tribute to the Toronto production.
Final Thought
Just For One Day features a terrific cast, great music, energetic choreography, and a compelling story. What’s not to like?
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