Greatest Days At Bradford Alhambra Review

DISCLOSURE – TICKETS TO SEE THE SHOW WERE GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER AND GUEST FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW

Reviewed by Jenny Bray

The audience enthusiasm and excitement for this show could be felt from the offset due to there there being some quite excitable Take That fans in the audience.  They were all well behaved, it just added to the anticipation.  Although this musical is full of Take That songs, the storyline is nothing to do with Take That and their rise to fame. Instead this is a story of 5 teenage girls who like the same band, their hopes and dreams as teenagers and then what they have become 25 years later.  The writer and director, Tim Firth, has successfully intertwined over 15 of Take That’s hits in with the main story.  A selection of these are; A Million Love Songs, Back For Good, Could It Be Magic, Pray, Shine and, of course, Greatest Day.

The show starts with Rach in the present day (Jennifer Ellison) recalling her teenage years.  It then moves to her and her friends at 16 in 1993.  Rach, now the teenage version (Olivia Hallett) is getting ready for school.  She meets up with Debs (Mary Moore) at the school lockers and they start discussing Top of The Pops from the night before. Debs has managed to record some of the show on her portable cassette player (modern equipment at the time and well thought out to be able to hold it right up to the TV to be able to record the sound!).  The other girls then show up, Claire (Evangeline Jarvis Jones), Zoe (Bayley Hart) and Heather (Kitty Harris) all giddy about ‘the band’ that were on Top of The Pops and that they’re all excited about.  Debs lets on that she has won 5 tickets to see the band in Manchester and they all decide what excuses to give their parents to be able to escape to go to the gig (a reminder of the things you could get away with growing up in the 90s, before mobile phones, social media and the ability to constantly trace your child’s movements!).

25 years later, as adults, all the girls have drifted apart and have their own lives.  Rach discovers she has won a radio competition to see the band in Athens.  She’s won 4 tickets, so her partner Jeff (Christopher D. Hunt) gets excited about a holiday to Athens that two of their friends can join them for but Rach decides to contact her teenage friends to join her.  They all meet up at the airport and discover what they have become as adults and how far from their teenage plans their realities are.  The airport transformation scene was well done.  I particularly liked Heather’s (Charlotte Anne Steen) adult change and hearing what Zoe (Holly Ashton), the studious teenager, had ended up doing.  Claire’s (Karen Holmes) story was sadder and shows how people can continue to be affected by trauma when growing up.

The stage setting was very simple.  It was all grey and had minor changes to become school lockers, a stage, a bus, an airport, a police station etc.  It was a little drab and I think would have benefitted from a bit more colour and change to it, although I liked the light up stairs that were used and it was clever that the top of it doubled up as a stage for ‘the boys’.  Conversely, the outfits were often bright, which was a good contrast to the grey of the setting. The colours the older and younger girls wore matched up so it was easy to link them as some of their looks were quite different.

The Alhambra is fairly central to Bradford and easy to find as it is well signposted.  We parked for just £1 (all evening after 6pm) in the car park behind the National Science and Media Museum just down the road.  There are currently roadworks all around the theatre area so allow a little more time for parking and reaching the theatre.

As someone just a few years younger than those portrayed in the initial 1993 setting, I remember when Take That were becoming the mega group of the time, so this musical feels very nostalgic.  I was 1 of a group of 5 key girl friends in school, where we all gelled even though we had different backgrounds, personalities and likes (only 1 of us was really in to Take That, while the rest of us weren’t so may have occasionally taken the mickey at her obsession, sorry Sarah!).  Thankfully, we didn’t experience the same sadness covered in this musical.  Also, thanks to the joys of social media these days, I am still in touch with that group of school friends even though we all live in different parts of the country and don’t see each other.

I liked the fact that there were the young teenage girls and then a separate set of actors playing adult versions, with some scenes where both were on stage together.  It seemed a little odd that the band remained the same actors throughout, rather than having a more mature set for the reformation 25 years after the first gig shown.  However, it didn’t detract from the story as the band, although interwoven throughout the show, aren’t actually the main plot.

The band consisted of Jamie Corner, Archie Durrant, Regan Gascoigne, Alexanda O’Reilly and Taylor Alman.  They managed to successfully blend in to the background for some of the show, yet be full on centre stage for other bits.  They were very energetic and had great co-ordinated moves.

The actor that I enjoyed the most was Alan Stocks as ‘Every Dave’.  He appears as a multitude of different characters in many of the scenes, from bus driver to policeman and lots inbetween and managed to garner laughs in several of the roles he played.

I rate it a 4.5/5

Tickets cost from £20.50 to £55.50 (inclusive of booking fee)
Greatest Days is on at Bradford Alhambra between 19th and 23rd September 2023.
For more information or to book tickets visit www.bradford-theatres.co.uk or call the Box Office on 01274 432000
Bradford Theatres, The Alhambra Theatre, Morley Street, Bradford, BD7 1AJ
For further tour dates please visit; https://www.greatestdaysmusical.com

Rating: 4.5/5