Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky and the North American premiere cast of Just For One Day.Evan Zimmerman/Supplied
- Title: Just For One Day
- Written by: John O’Farrell
- Director: Luke Sheppard
- Actors: Julie Atherton, Craige Els, Fayth Ifil, Melissa Jacques, Hope Kenna, Tim Mahendran, Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky, Jack Michael Stacey, George Ure
- Company: Mirvish Productions
- Venue: CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Until March 15, 2025
Tiny bodies with swollen stomachs. Brittle limbs with rounded joints. Corpses everywhere: In caskets, in stretchers, in piles.
In 1984, the BBC recorded a shocking newscast that inspired people around the world to jump into action. Michael Buerk’s footage, filmed on a remote plain in northern Ethiopia, showed a community withering away, with starving babies, gaunt mothers and helpless children looking into the camera with a prayer on their lips: “Help us.”
Bob Geldof, lead singer of Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, saw that broadcast and decided to help the only way he knew how – with music. Geldof quickly spearheaded the supergroup that would become Band Aid, resulting in the mega-single Do They Know It’s Christmas?, which raised US$10-million for Ethiopia within a year.
But that wasn’t enough for Geldof, who with musician Midge Ure decided to go even further with relief efforts. Soon enough, Live Aid was born, with in-person performances in Philadelphia and London and live feeds beamed to television sets around the world. Live Aid featured some of the biggest names in music, icons such as David Bowie, Phil Collins and the Who, and to this day, its legacy looms large over pop culture.
Just For One Day, written by Something Rotten!’s John O’Farrell with permission of the Band Aid Charitable Trust, tells the story of Live Aid, or at least one side of it: Geldof’s. Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the mythology of Live Aid takes shape, with Geldof (played by Craige Els with perfect swagger) at its centre, swearing up a storm and working tirelessly to make people understand the suffering at the heart of his efforts.
Just For One Day is yet another jukebox musical, with all the boons and pitfalls such a work might imply. Its tracklist, studded with songs by everyone from Queen to Bryan Adams, is nearly as rousing as Live Aid itself, and Matthew Brind’s new arrangements lift the anthems of the 1980s to new heights. Indeed, the music of Just For One Day is close to flawless, impeccably sung by its rock-solid cast and impressively steered by musical director Patrick Hurley (even though Gareth Owen’s sound design occasionally over-amplifies the band, vibrating the walls of the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre).
But, as has become a common fate for jukebox musicals, O’Farrell’s book is leaky with plot holes, with a few story contrivances that might make you wish this theatrical affair lasted just for one hour. A frame narrative involving university-aged daughter Jemma (an earnest Fayth Ifil) and her mum Suzanne (a lovely Melissa Jacques) doesn’t become particularly relevant to the show’s larger themes until Just For One Day hits its final beats, by which point it seems there might be a less narratively flimsy means of proving the importance of intergenerational collaboration and activism.
Lest you need further proof that Just For One Day overly delights in nostalgic cringe, Margaret Thatcher (played by an apt Julie Atherton) raps. Twice.
There’s a lot to wrestle with in Just For One Day, but its undercooked attempts at discussing the resulting controversies of Live Aid are tough to ignore, no matter how good the music is. O’Farrell uses Amara, an Ethiopian aid worker (played generously by Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky), to provide context to fictionalized Geldof’s belief that famine is just about food. Over time, Geldof comes to understand that humanitarian aid is a complex network of supply chains, cartels and infrastructure that requires expertise and diplomacy to distribute – that learning curve could be further teased out before Just For One Day heads back across the pond to the West End this spring.
A throwaway line from Jemma, too, points out that Live Aid and its branding ultimately homogenized Africa, turning 54 countries with unique identities and circumstances into a conglomerate in need of unspecific Western pity. While reviews from the previous U.K. production of Just For One Day suggest O’Farrell has dug deeper into this issue in recent drafts, there’s room yet to explore – Live Aid’s legacy is much more complicated than a concert.
To its credit, Just For One Day is often quite fun, and under the direction of Luke Sheppard (& Juliet) and with Ebony Molina’s choreography, it’s easy to feel swept away by the musical’s extraordinarily strong ensemble cast. It’s honourable, too, that the production is donating 10 per cent of ticket sales to the Band Aid Charitable Trust.
But ultimately, it feels like Geldof himself may have been too close to this project, almost certainly a condition of the musical happening at all but a barrier to the Live Aid story being told accurately, with equal consideration given to its historic wins and qualifiable missteps. The end result is unfortunate: an underwritten, superficial dance party, with its potential for dramaturgical rigour left blowin’ in the wind.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)
