Malek's mission

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2018)

I grew up with Queen. I remember seeing Bohemian Rapsody on TV for the first time and I remember being mesmerized by Mr. Mercury's performance. They didn't sing like that in church. Last night I saw Rami Malek and was just as fascinated. The story, the direction and the design are as slick as any Hollywood movie, but what captured me was that I as a "consumer" was watching the actor Malek looking at Mercury's life from the inside. He didn't embody Mercury (impossible) but observed it. Just like he observed Mercury's surroundings and his battles. I was fortunate to have met and workshopped with Augusto Boal. He once said: "Theatre - or theatricality - is the capacity, this human property which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity." Here we see an actor who applies that principle to his role and lets us all observe the actor Mercury through his action. Boal's mission was to use theatre to induce social change, I think it was Malek's mission to have us look at our own daily performances, because we all are, to use Boal's word, spect-actors.