The Band review: Take That's faithful fangirls fail to relight the fire

1/6
Fiona Mountford12 December 2018

This should have been a banker and yet, bewilderingly, it’s a stinker. How could a musical about a 25-year female friendship based around the music of Take That possibly go wrong?

Writer Tim Firth leaves no cliché unturned but adds some dubious snippets of pop psychology as he plots the dopiest and most generic story of a group of female friends.

A group of schoolgirl fans of “the band” — the five girls become four after a while, a low-flying Take That analogy, perhaps — vow never to lose touch. Fast-forward 25 years — they’ve not seen each other since and the ever-youthful band are performing in Prague.

The boyband, played by the five winners of the BBC’s Let It Shine, pop up/droop around the action amiably enough in Kim Gavin and Jack Ryder’s production, but they’re by no means remarkable. Life has not been too kind to the four Everywomen since their schooldays but they’re relentlessly plucky souls who plough through this cobblers gamely enough. A bit of real grit in their back-stories, instead of bland generalisations and pedestrian plodding, would have worked wonders.

With regret, one can only conclude that it’s less a case of Never Forget (where you’ve come here from) and more Try to Forget (that you’ve been to this show).

Until Jan 12 (020 7930 8800, thebandmusical.com)

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