Review: Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds Live

IN 1938 Hollywood star Orson Welles terrified the populace of New York when they heard his radio version of H G Wells' classic sci-fi masterpiece ... and believed every word.

Eight decades later Jeff Wayne is stretching the emotions of his 21st-Century audience in a similar way by using every techno-gimmick in the book.

Wayne's 1978 score was built around the original text, a musical visualisation of Predator-like monsters from Mars. The concept album sold in its millions.

But Wayne wanted to push back the boundaries of musical presentation.

The result is a fantastic, thrilling fusion of sound and imagery featuring an 11-foot floating hologram of Richard Burton; a three-tonne, 35-foot tall Martian Fighting Machine firing heat rays; a 100-foot-wide screen projecting CGI animation plus explosive pyrotechnics.

Justin Hayward is still part of the project, his vocals on Forever Autumn sounding as sharp and pure as ever; and Chris Thompson, once of Manfred Mann's Earth Band, rocks on Thunder Child. Relative newcomers, but equally impressive, are Alexis James as the Artilleryman; Shannon Noll as Parson Nathaniel, and ex-Brookside actress Jennifer Ellison, as the Parson's wife, whose dazzling looks are matched by her singing prowess.

Wayne is there himself, of course, energetically conducting the Black Smoke Band and the soaring UlladubUlla Strings, but as the audience marvelled at all the electronic wizardry he has invested into his creation I couldn't help thinking that if you strip all that away, the music, powerful and melodic, rhythmic and raw, still proudly stands on its own merits.