As some of you may know, I am a big fan of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of the HG Wells novel, The War of the Worlds. It was first released in 1978, and you can get an idea of its popularity by the fact that it is still going strong now. In 2006 Wayne created a stage show so that the work could be performed live, and in 2013 a performance at the O2 Arena in London was filmed. Last week I picked up a DVD of it, and having now watched it I am pleased to have done so.

Obviously the new version has a very different cast. The seemingly impossible job of replacing Richard Burton in the part of The Journalist has fallen to Liam Neeson who does a remarkably good job. Obviously someone as high profile as Neeson isn’t going to be able to tour with a stage show, so his part appears on a giant screen. There’s a lot of green-screen work, which looks horribly amateurish compared to something like Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films, but does the job. Much more impressively, there are short sections in which Neeson appears on stage as a hologram, interacting with the live actors. That’s appropriately science-fictional.

Neeson doesn’t sing, of course. When he is required to do so his part is taken by Marti Pellow, formerly of Wet Wet Wet. Again it is a tough ask to take on songs originally recorded by Justin Hayward, but Pellow does OK. In any case I’ll forgive him a lot for the way he disposes of the idiot interviewer in one of the bonus features. Mr. Pellow is clearly a fan.

The original stage production saw Jason Donovan take the part of The Artilleryman, but for this production he has moved sideways and plays The Parson. He’s very good indeed. Kerry Ellis, who plays Beth, The Parson’s Wife, is a great singer but can’t match Donovan’s acting.

The part of The Artilleryman is taken by Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs. He too turns in a superb performance. Wayne has got in a specialist rock front man, Will Stapleton of Jettblack, for the song, “Thunder Child”, and that works well too.

One of the most obvious things about the new version is that it has gone totally steampunk. The stage dressing, and even the outfits of the orchestra and band, are now all very clearly from an imagined version of Victorian England rather than the real thing. There is a little more material now that Wayne isn’t limited by the length of two vinyl albums, so the story is a little easier to follow, but you have to look for most of the new stuff.

From a musical point of view the best thing is the presence of Chris Spedding and Herbie Flowers (whom I believe were both on the original recording). However, my eye was caught by the woman playing harp and percussion. It turned out that she’s Julia Thornton, who has toured with Roxy Music and is part of The Metaphors, a band formed by Andy McKay and Phil Thompson. Cue squee from the aging Roxy fangirl. She also has good taste in corsets.

Strangely the albums appear to be only available as expensive imports in the USA, but the whole of the original version has been uploaded to YouTube if you want to look for it. Here’s a taster.