Nostalgia can be seriously powerful - and Greatest Days uses it to make the audience boogie and sob in equal measure.
The musical, based on the songs of Take That (and previously titled The Band), is on a tour of the UK and its latest stop is at Wales Millennium Centre. It follows Rachel (played in two timelines by Emilie Cunliffe and Coronation Street’s Kym Marsh) and her group of mates who bond over a shared love of a boyband but go their separate ways when tragedy shakes their friendship - until they reunite to see the band one more time
We first meet them as excitable, relatable, hilariously noisy teenage mega-fans, joking about which band member they’re going to marry and singing along to their songs on the bus. But life doesn’t go to plan for Zoe (Hannah Brown/Holly Ashton), Heather (Kitty Harris/Rachel Marwood), Claire (Mari McGinlay/Jamie-Rose Monk) and Rachel, and when they return to the stage as adults, that is when Greatest Days finds its groove in their arguments, regrets and grief.
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Surprisingly, given the strength of the Take That songbook including Back For Good, Do What You Like and Shine) the music often takes a backseat. There’s not an actively bad voice in the cast, but neither do any of them particularly stand out. Advisably, there are no attempts by ‘the band’ to perfectly impersonate Robbie, Gary and the rest, but that does mean the five singers (played by Kalifa Burton, Jamie Corner, Archie Durrant and Dancing on Ice winner Regan Gascoigne) blur into one.
The star power is more in the acting, especially in Kym Marsh’s lead performance and in how the young cast effortlessly creates an authentic, believable bond between their characters before showing how it breaks down. This show pulls at the heartstrings a staggering amount, and you might find yourself crying.
But the band's hits do all get their moment, from early singles like Pray to 2000s tunes like Shine and Rule the World, and they’ll send a tingle down the spine of anyone who's ever turned on a radio. On a few occasions the five boyband members perform a mini-concert and it’s just as much a frenzy of flashing lights, pumping music and 90s choreo as you’d hope.
The script is funny and warm but veers into being too sappy on occasion, and hits the wrong notes sometimes; Claire’s character has a genuinely emotional moment that deserves better than to be bookended by a couple of tired jokes about her weight. But the writing is mostly self-aware enough to know when to rein it back.
The cast is bolstered by Mary Moore’s memorable performance as the group's excitable and loving childhood friend Debbie, and comic relief by Alan Stocks who plays every bumbling, quippy authority figure in the show and Christopher D Hunt as Jeff, Rachel’s well-meaning but amusingly incompetent boyfriend.
Greatest Days makes for a funny, impactful and appropriately cheesy choice for a trip to the theatre that packs way more of an emotional punch than expected.
Greatest Days features 15 of Take That's songs and stars Kym Marsh. It's running at Wales Millennium Centre until July 1, 2023 and you can book tickets here.
