Queen’s music was never designed to be timid, and Theatre Royal Windsor’s community production of We Will Rock You embraces its scale, theatricality and exuberance. Created through a free, intensive three-week summer project, the production brings together a cast of 36 local performers aged sixteen and over. The result is an ambitious, impressively polished and thoroughly entertaining evening that demonstrates just how much can be accomplished when emerging performers are given professional support and resources.

Set 300 years in the future, Ben Elton’s knowingly preposterous story unfolds on the iPlanet, a dystopian world in which Globalsoft has outlawed musical instruments, suppressed individuality and replaced live music with computer-generated conformity. Young Galileo hears fragments of ancient songs in his head and, together with fellow outsider Scaramouche, becomes caught up with the Bohemians, rebels searching for the last surviving musical instrument. Killer Queen and her secret-police commander Khashoggi are determined to stop them before real rock music can return.

The plot is principally a framework upon which to hang Queen’s formidable catalogue, but the script’s mixture of dystopian parody, terrible puns and deliberately mangled cultural history produces plenty of laughter. The Windsor production keeps its topical satire current: Buddy traces the death of rock back to X Factor, Radio Ga Ga is rewritten for the age of the internet and cyberspace, and Galileo and Scaramouche’s lovers’ quarrel finds room for a Taylor Swift joke. These touches help refresh a musical first staged more than two decades ago. Under Carole Todd’s direction, the storytelling remains clear and neither half is allowed to drag, despite the number of songs, characters and locations it must accommodate.

At the back of the stage, a very large screen provides much of the production’s visual identity. Still and moving imagery swiftly establishes each new setting, while live camera feeds allow characters’ disembodied heads to address those onstage from elsewhere. It is an excellent creative choice and is used as an integral storytelling device rather than merely as decoration.

Its most memorable use comes when Buddy and the Bohemians finally coax an ancient video tape into working. As its contents spread across the screen to the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody, the production combines live action, music and specially prepared video with remarkable precision. The sequence looks genuinely professional and becomes the visual highlight of the evening as the characters decipher the recording and discover that the Place of Champions is Wembley. Considerable time, care and technical preparation must have gone into making it work so effectively.

Ben Aston handles the vocally demanding role of Galileo very well. However, the evening’s outstanding singer is Charlotte Tuffen as Scaramouche, his sharp-witted fellow outsider and eventual love interest. Whether leading Somebody to Love or joining Aston in numbers such as Under Pressure and Who Wants to Live Forever, Tuffen’s superb voice makes her the vocal highlight of the production.

Ella Murphy is another vocal standout as Oz. Her performance of No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young) supplies one of the evening’s more reflective moments, while she also contributes fully to the ensemble’s singing and choreography. Michael Workman provides strong and dependable support as Brit, giving the Bohemian rebels a suitably assured presence.

Laura Hartley sings well and impresses as Killer Queen, especially when tackling the character’s succession of familiar numbers. The role could perhaps be played with a little more outright evil and menace, which would increase the danger beneath the flamboyance, but Hartley nevertheless commands attention. As Khashoggi, Yiorgo Sotiro gives a funny, expressive and well-acted performance. His characterisation and comic reactions are consistently effective, although his singing is less secure and suffers from noticeable problems with intonation in several passages. Khashoggi is primarily an acting and comedy role rather than one of the main vocal showcases, and Sotiro’s personality ensures that the character remains entertaining.

The evening’s richest source of comedy is probably Ed Percival as Buddy, the ageing hippie and keeper of rock’s lost history. Buddy’s confident mispronunciations of famous names and his half-remembered phrases from the past repeatedly earn large laughs. Percival understands that the humour lies in Buddy’s absolute certainty rather than in signalling every joke, and his amiable presence helps carry the second half towards its Wembley conclusion.

The young ensemble is among the production’s greatest strengths. Its group singing is absolutely spot on, while Hannah Victoria-Bennett’s choreography is performed with precision, confidence and abundant energy. These are clearly accomplished dancers, and a couple of well-integrated acrobatic moments add an extra flourish without appearing included merely for effect. Large numbers including Radio Ga Ga, One Vision and We Will Rock You give the company opportunities to fill the stage, and it does so with admirable discipline.

Equally important is the production’s musical direction. From the pit, Curtis Lavender conducts the cast to pre-recorded accompaniment, keeping the large company and demanding vocal arrangements tightly together. The accompaniment is extremely well played and supplies the power and detail Queen’s score requires. The sound is generally effective, although one ensemble performer’s microphone appears not to function on a couple of occasions. His natural voice can still be heard in the auditorium, but the momentary absence of amplification is noticeable.

The audience responds warmly throughout, laughing frequently and readily entering into the communal spirit of the larger numbers. Hands wave across the auditorium and feet stamp to the unmistakable rhythm of We Will Rock You. The conclusion brings a partial standing ovation; those remaining seated continue clapping and waving enthusiastically before the cast returns for an encore of Bohemian Rhapsody.

This production may have been assembled as a community summer project, but there is nothing casual about the commitment displayed onstage or the work surrounding it. Strong principal voices, exceptionally disciplined ensemble work, assured musical direction and imaginative video design combine to create a celebration of Queen that is both warmly inclusive and impressively accomplished. It does exactly what We Will Rock You should do: sends its audience out smiling, energised and with those songs still ringing in their ears.