While nothing can quite compare to 1985’s all-star charity concert Live Aid, someone is going to try and recreate that feeling in the theater.
Deadline reports Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof is working on a stage musical about the legendary benefit concerts, titled Just For One Day. It’s scheduled to run at London’s Old Vic Theatre from January 26 to March 30.
The Live Aid concerts took place in both London and Philadelphia, and featured performances by such huge stars as Elton John, Madonna, George Michael, Phil Collins, Sting, U2, Bryan Adams, Tom Petty, Kenny Loggins, Eric Clapton, Duran Duran, Hall & Oates, Queen, Tina Turner and dozens more. The shows raised more than $150 million for Ethiopian famine relief.
The show, directed by & Juliet’s Luke Sheppard, is expected to feature several of the songs performed during the concerts. Sheppard tells Deadline that while Geldof will be a character in the musical, it won’t have “people dressing up as the artists and doing it as a tribute — we’ve moved very far away from that.”
He notes, “It’s all the extraordinary music from that day, but it’s sung by this fierce generation of musical theater artists, who just blow the roof off.”
Sheppard says Just For One Day will put the historic concerts “in the hands of the people who made it, who were there, who experienced it,” adding, “So, it’s Live Aid for the people essentially, as opposed to a kind of tribute act version of the show.”
So far, Sheppard hasn’t confirmed which songs will be used in the musical, although with a nod of his head, he did suggest to Deadline that Queen’s “We Are The Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” could be in it.
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