Friday 25 November 2011

24th of november, 2011

hello! so as you know, yesterday i went to see we will rock you, at the grand theatre in leeds. it was the 20th anniversary of freddie mercury's death and i wanted to celebrate in style. i went with my friend lauren, who wasn't a big queen fan, but i think i've converted her.

i had sixth form in the morning so i wore my queen top and painted my nails freddie style (a diy post on that coming up soon - not very difficult to do but needs a bit of explaining) for the occasion. my friends were lovely and we talked about queen for most of the school day. then i went home, listened to queen, lit a few candles (i wanted to light twenty, one for every year, but i think that might have become a serious fire hazard...), cried quite a lot and got ready to go to the show.

we had mcdonalds for tea and went up to the grand theatre. there was a huge crowd outside but we managed to get in easily, as the crowd was mostly a queue for the merchandise. our seats were surprisingly good; i thought they were going to be bad because i had wanted to go on that date so badly that i just booked any seats available. i was sat next to a lovely old couple who were obviously huge queen fans and were dancing and singing throughout the whole show.


sorry for the crazy looking photo, we were both trying not to laugh when i took it as the people sat in front of us were looking over their shoulder's at us with confused looks on their faces. :)

i don't want to ruin it for you, so i won't say much about the actual play. all i'll say is, it was amazing, completely worth the £70 and i would definitely, definitely jump at the chance to go again. i had heard that the story wasn't very good but i really loved it. i thought the story was quite clever, and they managed to slot in all the best known queen songs. it was so funny as well, we were doubled over in our seats laughing. i had warned lauren that i was probably going to cry at some point, and sure enough i did, during the performances of 'no one but you (only the good die young)' and 'these are the days of our lies'. i didn't expect lauren to cry though, but during 'we are the champions' and 'bohemian rhapsody' we were both stood, waving and singing, with tears running down our cheeks. also, the lovely old man sat next to me grabbed my hand during 'we are the champions' and we waved together, it was quite cute, like a bond between two distant generations.

the best bit for me was seeing rufus taylor during the curtain call. he's the son of roger taylor, drummer of queen, and is currently playing drums for the we will rock you uk tour. i'm a big fan of his and i was really excited to get to see him play. i was a bit nervous at first because i couldn't figure out where the band was. we got to see them during the second half but i couldn't see rufus anywhere, and i was a bit upset because i thought that i'd chosen the wrong day to see him and that he was probably with his dad or something. rufus was there though, hiding behind his drums, and he came on at the end to take a bow, whilst tapping his legs with his drumsticks to beat off nerves (so cute! i love him!).

after the show, the cast came on stage to get us to cheer for freddie, and to inform us that members of the cast will be holding collection buckets as we left and would love donations to support the mercury phoenix trust. i cleared out my purse and gave around £4 to the actor who was playing 'cliff richard', i think. i told him i loved his hair and he said he was going to take it off in a bit and i could have it if i loved it so much. i might hold him to that!

on the way out of the theatre, i realised it was nearly 11 o'clock and had to rush home as i had to catch a train at half nine the next morning to go to harrogate with my sixth form (maybe a post on that later?). i was hoping to hang around for a bit outside to meet rufus taylor but unfortunately i couldn't. :(

i also didn't have enough money with me on the night to buy a we will rock you t-shirt, but i'm going to town tomorrow to try and grab one while the merchandise stall is open during the saturday matinee performance. tomorrow will be the last day that we will rock you is in my hometown and i'll be sad to see it go.


i filmed a little bit of my day and this is all the footage i shot. it isn't much, i know. oh, and excuse my accent about halfway in, for some reason i put on a strange posh voice to say hi to my friends from tumblr (i had been meaning to get rufus to say hi to them but of course, i didn't get to meet him).

overall, it was a great (but sad) day, an amazing show and a perfect way to celebrate freddie's life. thank you for everything, darling, you really did rock us. rest in peace. xxx

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