Freddie Mercury may no longer be with us, but his music undoubtedly is. And now, it’s being recreated as never before in Queen: It’s a Kinda Magic, a musical endorsed by Freddie’s personal assistant Peter Freestone. Craig Pesco stars in the musical as Queen’s unforgettable frontman. Here’s what Craig had to say about the timelessness of Queen.

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The Show: This production has been touring the world for just over six years now. It’s a two-hour show that I like to refer to as a fantasy Queen concert. It incorporates all of the production values, outrageous costumes, massive stage, video screens featuring rare footage donated to us by Peter Freestone, who was Freddie Mercury’s personal assistant. It’s a two-hour recreation of a rock concert with the high points of what we feel are Queens greatest performances. Our aim is to have the audience come in and take their seats and feel like they’re at a Queen concert. We used technicians from the UK to recreate their light show and their staging. From the reports we’ve had back from the fans it’s working on all fronts.

The Preparation: The songs are all quite complex, and for the musicians, we found it quite a challenge to recreate those. They’ve already been laid down and they’re quite easy to learn. But I think the key is phonically appearing to sound like Queen. When you put on a Queen CD, there’s a certain sound and a certain vibe to it. So, when we first started, we sat down in the studio for almost eighteen months and worked with new technology and some of the more popular front of house engineers came in and sat down with some people and said how are we going to do “Bohemian Rhapsody” and make it sound like it does on the CD. Technology has changed since 1975, so you can sit down and say well here’s a delay unit and if we use that that might recreate that middle delay they had in bohemian rhapsody. Or here’s a reverb unit we can put it on your voice and make it sound like that other section from “Somebody to Love.”

Once we had established that and got the sound happening, then it was a matter of bringing in the outfits, pacing the show like you would a Queen show, developing the light show and the video screen so it became part of one huge production, and giving you a full on rock show in a theatrical sense.

Getting into Character: All of the individual characters on stage have done their research and looked into the idiosyncrasies of each player. We’ve realised through our workings with the Queen organisation how important each character was to the sound. The fact that John Deacon, the bass player, had written “I Want to Break Free” and “Another One Bites the Dust” and several other of my favourite Queen songs just shows that they all had massive talent and all had a distinctive role to play in the show. We recreate that as we put as much attention into them as the Freddie character. We’ve had the school friends of John Deacon who’ve seen us overseas and said I used to go to school with that guy and to see you recreating him on the stage is uncanny.

Peter Freestone, who was Freddie ‘s personal assistant for the last eleven years of his life and who was with him every day, saw us in Singapore in 2003, and his reaction was “you guys have nailed it.” It was like an illusion for him, like he’d walked back and was seeing Queen for the first time and it was 1979. Once we hit that point, we knew we were onto something.

The Original Queen: I remember the first time I bought Bohemian Rhapsody and I remember seeing Freddie Mercury at the piano. Back then he had the nail polish and the long hair and the satin catsuit and to me it looked like an oriental woman playing because he had eye make up on. The green lighting around the drum kit and that look of Freddie was that of some sort of oriental princess. Then you hear the sound and the opera section, and it was just so far ahead of anything around at the time – it still is to this day.

So that was my initial impression of Queen and that’s the one that stays with me. I think it was the mystery of watching that and trying to work out what kind of group it was that I’ve carried on. There’s always a sense of mystery and majesty about Queen that we try to maintain as well as all of the tactile things like the outfits and the light show and the production. There’s also a sense of mystery and a sense of humour and a sense of outrageousness that has to be there.

Favourite Queen Songs: My personal favourites are the lesser known songs. I’ve been performing “Rhapsody” and “Champions” and “We Will Rock You” for the last six years and I still love them and they still retain their power. For a massive audience, they work wonderfully, but my personal favourites are some of the earlier songs. On this tour we’ve just included some of my favourites – “Seven Seas of Rye” and “In the Lap of the Gods” off the Sheer Heart Attack album.

The Fans: The most outrageous audiences we’ve ever had were definitely in Spain. They are just crazy, and we were doing three or four encores over there. But Australia and North America and the rest of the world have always had a soft spot for Queen and it really shows. This is the first major Australian show we’ve done in two years and just by ticket sales and the enthusiasm that’s around I think it’s going to be a really good tour.

If people have seen us before – it’s just been refreshed, and that’s something we always like to do for ourselves and our audience. We have done probably three major Australian tours so far in the history of the production and each one has been different. This one is the biggest upgrade we’ve ever done, so if you’ve seen it before you’re going to come back and see a lot more stuff and a lot more new outfits and new songs and another great celebration of Queen – long may they reign.

Queen: It’s a Kinda Magic is at Burswood Theatre this Friday and Saturday July 20 and 21 and in Mandurah and Bunbury July 26-28. Tickets are available from Ticketek (13 28 49). For more information, visit www.queen.itsakindamagic.com.