Just For One Day

Just For One Day – The Old Vic

February 2023 (Preview)

Just For One Day is described as “the Live Aid Musical”. As you would expect, this is a jukebox musical. It takes advantage of the large catalogue of songs (and associated nostalgia) from the Live Aid concerts in July 1985.

The music, the excitement and the energy of that Live Aid experience that is the draw here. This production certainly delivers on that promise. The show is packed with outstanding set-pieces and is worth seeing just for the incredible renditions of the pop and rock classics. Both solo performances and ensemble pieces which can’t help but leave you with a strong emotional reaction. Fans of this era of music and good vocal performances are sure to love this.

The dance, movement and overall presentation solidly back-up the vocal performances to really present the audience with musical numbers. These stack-up with the best West End shows in terms of quality and entertainment value. The high energy number deliver in pace and excitement, and the emotional ballads manage to really hit the right spot, the overall staging, choreography and vocal arrangements being excellently judged.

It is worth highlighting the excellent band who are on stage the entire time. They get their own moments to shine as performers in their own right – a rare treat in London theatre packed with so many talented musicians.

Bringing Live Aid to life as a musical always going to be a challenging undertaking – how to tell a coherent and stageable story of Live Aid in this format. 

While the track list is undeniably fantastic, as the action moved from spoken into songs, the songs didn’t always feel fully connected to the emotion of the preceding or subsequent scene. Some songs are been well chosen, and a couple excellently well adapted for the shos. But the overwhelming feeling was of a “play with music” than a true musical (where the music augments the story). That said, the songs matched the energy well and sometimes were the spot-on perfect song. The Maggie-Bob song was a memorable moment.

The overall conceit of telling it from the perspective of Bob Geldof’s point of view, was probably the right way to go. We see the efforts of behind-the-scenes people and the associated struggles of pulling together this effort, and the motivations behind how we got to Live Aid despite its obvious flaws and contradictions – that those are aired and addressed is a real credit to the writers.

The other part of the conceit – of an older generation “teaching” the younger generation and trying to make it relevant felt somewhat strained at points – I think it gives the audience too little credit for being able to connect the dots themselves. The writing here also felt much less strong and more of an after-thought. All that said, though, there was a coherent story and the energy of the songs, and the story carried the audience through. The fact that the production addressed some of the more uncomfortable aspects of Live Aid is creditable and gave the story some additional gravitas. A must see for fans of that era of music and worth going to for everyone else just for the high-quality performances.