THE WAR OF THE WORLDS – BRIGHTON CENTRE 12.4.25 (EVENING SHOW)
Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds (TWOTW) was initially scheduled to return to touring as a 17-date (19 shows) UK and Ireland arena tour. It would have been just in time to mark 130 years since the publication of H.G. Wells’s dystopian Victorian science fiction novel.
Now, I don’t need to address the reasoning for the gap between the planned tour of 2023 and the touring date of 2025. There appears to be no official statement about why the tour was delayed. However, a global virus outbreak and subsequent economic downturn hit everyone. Not even musicals can survive a global shutdown. In short, a virus put pay to the tour, much as it did to the rest of the world, for those who are fully aware of the eventual downfall of the Alien invaders might have seen this as a wry state of affairs.
Conducted by Jeff Wayne, the musical features Liam Neeson in 3D holography as ‘the journalist’, narrating his story of survival from the Martian invasion of 1898. The tour was again to feature exciting new cast members, mostly made up from musical theatre and pop.
Billed as “one of the most trailblazing arena tours of all time”, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (TWOTW) has been regarded as a musical spectacular like none other. The production remains a favourite to millions worldwide and excites audiences of all ages.
In 2006, TWOTW was considered a cutting-edge production with six trucks filled to the brim. By 2025, marking 19 years of live touring, the production now requires 12 trucks, and a host of tricks up its sleeve to keep the modern audience engaged in the spectacle.
Over the last nineteen years, many notables have come and gone to take on the core players’ roles, though ‘the Journalist’ has remained Liam Neeson throughout. A glittering cast of notable British chart mainstays and favourites from stage and screen has included the likes of Gary Barlow, Marti Pellow, Michael Praed, Newton Faulkner, Ricky Wilson, Jason Donovan, Duncan James, Joss Stone, Claire Richards, AND last but never least David Essex!
I vividly recall the original album cover, emblazoned as it was with the tripod alien machines shooting lasers and invading Earth. I can recall examining it for hours. So, it was a similar fascination that I accepted the call to review the spectacle which had been touring for the best part of my adult life. With such a bombastic brief (as previously detailed), I was looking forward to enjoying a musical for the first time since they had begun to feel rather plaid and hackneyed.
What would Wells have thought of the many adaptations of his dystopian vision of humanity’s future? Perhaps the most successful was Orson Wells’s 1938 radio play version. Broadcast without warning and resulting in mass panic as listeners assumed it to be fact rather than fiction. However, historians now believe that newspapers exaggerated the hysteria at the time. Then there is Wayne’s 1978 prog-rock classic album (which remains one of the UK’s top 40 best-selling albums of all time), followed by Wayne’s musical adaptation of his album, and finally there are the two film adaptations, one by Spielberg with Cruise, set in the U.S.
What is so enduring about the potential demise of humanity? Why a good old-fashioned love story and the survival of all that is good in humanity, of course! You only have to look at the success of shows like the current hit ‘The Last of Us’, returning to screens this week. The monster of all dystopian realities shows ‘The Walking Dead’, a comic book series that spawned a world smash hit of a TV series with a now staggering number of spin-offs that never seem to end. The means of demise may change, be it mutating viruses or mutating fungi; we cannot get enough of a long, slow, drawn-out tale of human survival against the odds or mushrooms.
I was intrigued about how the album would translate to the stage and the screen.
It hasn’t always worked. Where the reader’s imagination worked for Wells, the idea of Cruise’s early demise at the hands of Alien invaders only held firm as he had to keep young and vulnerable Elle Fanning safe.
Back to the version in hand. We arrived dead on time for the doors billed as opening at 6:30pm. They did not, and the queue became ridiculously long on several occasions. Luckily, the staff at the Brighton Centre are well used to huge music and comedy tours. A nineteen-year-old musical wasn’t about to stop them in their tracks. Everyone was in the venue and seated before you had time to blink.
One thing about the Brighton Centre is you can’t get a bad view. I don’t have much love for the venue. Not many people in Brighton do. It’s a vast hall without a personality of its own. The exterior is unforgiving and dated. Its proximity to the wedding cake exterior of the Grand hotel doesn’t help endear many to it. Say what you will though, it’s a well-oiled machine and its staff are possibly the friendliest in Brighton. Then I’m hard pressed to think of any venue in Brighton which doesn’t have a welcoming front of house staff.
Once seated, we could drink in the visuals, hinting at the spectacular stage we were about to enjoy. Our seats were comfortable, the view unrestricted, and no other patron was close enough to interrupt our show. Neither would we have to stand should there be any latecomers. You could be late given that the show didn’t start until 8pm when the doors were opened at 6:30pm. It’s challenging to be an hour and a half late to the show, which costs the best part of a month’s rent, but I am sure it happened.
To the left and right of the stage are huge video screen mixed visuals of what was to come with photos sent in by former attendees. How often did we see the happy faces of people who had sent in photos via social media to express their absolute joy at attending the show? I think roughly eight times. I could be exaggerating, but time stopped. It could have been the music that was on repeat, but I was beginning to welcome the idea of an alien invasion.
The show started on the dot and got off to a bang, with Liam popping up and looking nearly twenty years younger because he was, at least when the hologram was recorded. It’s a bit disconcerting to be presented with a larger-than-life version of a man with a particular set of skills, which were accidentally recorded and broadcast for all and sundry to hear. But less of Liam’s faux-pas and back when he had more hair.
If you are unfamiliar with the backbone of the storyline, I will attempt to give you an outline without spoilers. Our narrator and hero, played by Liam, ‘The journalist’, has been tasked with narrating the events of a worldwide Alien invasion told from his point of view as an inhabitant of London. He recounts his progress and attempts to stay with and save those he loves while trying to survive the alien menace.
The show’s first half has the main protagonists mostly singing about their plight while Liam continues to stick with the spoken word. This casting decision was probably best for all concerned. Will they survive? Will humanity? We are left on a cliffhanger, asking these questions and the directions to the toilets at the end of the first half. The audience scattered (including us) foraging for food, water, and merchandise.
It was at this point I started to ponder more significant questions, like “Why is the queue for the ladies always longer than the men’s?”, “Why does it take two people to coordinate getting a drink and visiting the toilet facilities?”, and “How would this show go down, say in another venue?. Perhaps one that was currently enduring, or had recently endured their devastating invasion”. It was the last thought that stuck with me the longest and, in the end, gnawed at me the most throughout the second half. The second half of the tale is sometimes unremittingly bleak, and things must always get worse before they can be resolved for better or worse.
The aliens themselves, having already made an impressive tripod house appearance towering over the audience, had set most of the fire to the front of the stage repeatedly, so they also managed to fire lasers at us, and yet not one of the audience members fell in the crossfire. There is also a bridge. People walk across, mostly singing as they do so about their plight again. I won’t spoil the ending other than to say that the bridge does retract again.
Most locations mentioned were at the time of the Victorians, the centre of the financial and political world, and home to H.G. Wells himself. There is mention of other locations in the UK and even a brief chat to France, probably in Paris; it was to the French prime minister, after all, which seems to represent the whole of Europe.
Though this works for the worldview of the Victorian experience, it falls flat in today’s never more connected (or more alienated) worldview. Spielberg might have got it right; given the current world turmoil, an invasion of the U.S. while Cruise repeatedly runs from the Alien is the way to go. But haven’t London and Washington or N.Y.C and even L.A. been used to death, and are any of them the centre of the world anymore, much as they might like to think they are?
If we really must rehash Well’s work, why not this time make it relevant to the times in which we live and also more faithful to his original vision for the work and set it in a place currently being invaded against their will?
We left visually sated, but wondering if it would not perhaps have been more fulfilling to just read the original book.
