18/06/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Back in the 1990s, when Take That took the world by storm, I was very anti-boyband. They’re still not really my thing (I’m no aficionado, but I tend to prefer bands that form organically and, you know, play their own instruments). Still, now that I’m a bit older and less tribal, I have to admit that TT did have some banging tunes (Rule the World and Shine are the best, to my mind), although I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything other than incredulous that The Samaritans actually had to set up a helpline for distressed fans when the group announced that they were splitting up. Like… what?

Greatest Days, a colour-by-numbers jukebox musical, leans into the deep emotional connections young followers attach to their oblivious heroes, mining Take That’s back catalogue to mixed effect. Teenager Rachel (Lara McDonnell) is obsessed. Things aren’t great at home – her mum and dad spend all their time arguing – so she retreats into a fantasy life, where ‘the boys’ help her out. An early dance routine, where the Take-That-Alikes pop out of kitchen cupboards to pass her utensils, lift her up to the overhead cupboards and stir her spaghetti hoops fills me with hope: it’s bold and theatrical and a lot of fun. (Sadly, it’s a technique that soon outstays its welcome: too many similar scenes follow, and it all starts to feel a bit overdone.) Her pals, Heather, Zoe, Claire and Debbie (Eliza Dobson, Nandi Sawyers-Hudson, Carragon Guest and Jessie Mae Alonzo), are all equally fanatical, and their friendship reaches its apotheosis the night that Debbie gets them all tickets to a gig in Manchester.

Fast forward twenty-five years. Rachel has grown up to be Aisling Bea (Heather, Zoe and Claire have morphed into Alice Lowe, Amaka Okafor and Jayde Adams respectively, while the adult Debbie is notably absent). Grown-up Rachel is a nurse, and still obsessed with the boys, forcing the kids on her ward to listen to what they perceive as her terrible music taste. She loves her job and her sweet-natured boyfriend, Jeff (Marc Wootten), but something is missing. When she wins a radio phone-in competition, she’s suddenly faced with the opportunity to put that right, to reconnect with the old gang and see their favourite band one last time, as they perform a reunion gig in Athens…

With such a lively, amiable cast and some gloriously OTT big numbers (neither boarding an easyJet flight nor travelling on a night bus have ever looked even a tenth as glamorous as they do here), there’s a lot to like about Greatest Days. However, it’s very uneven, as if writer Tim Firth and director Coky Giedroyc have thrown a match into a box of unlabelled fireworks, some of which prove spectacular and light up the sky (sorry, couldn’t resist), while others fizzle out like proverbial damp squibs. The revelation that the statues in the fountain are the boys, for example, should be a cheeky little wink of a moment, but instead is drawn out into a boring ten-minute montage of selfie-taking. The central premise seems a little overwrought too.

A pleasant – if ironically forgettable – trip down memory lane, Greatest Days probably isn’t going to relight anyone’s fire (I know, I’m doing it again) but, if you’re a fan of ‘the boys’, then you’ll probably enjoy it, so you’d better hot-foot it to the cinema before you run out of time.

3 stars

Susan Singfield