Lyceum, Sheffield – until 11th March 2023
Reviewed by Alison Beaumont
4****
The Way Old Friends Do is a Birmingham Rep production presented by James Seabright in association with Jason Haigh-Ellery and Park Theatre. It is a new comedy about devotion, desire and dancing queens. The play tells the story of two old school friends Edward and Peter who when they were at school together in 1988 had come out to one another: one as being gay and the other as an ABBA fan. It is set in 2015 and brings the two friends together through a chance meeting, via a dating app. They then decide to form the world’s first drag ABBA tribute band calling themselves Head Over Heels.
The cast for this show is small but effective consisting of only six members, Edward (James Bradshaw) a flamboyant out of the closet gay man, Peter (Ian Hallard) an avid bisexual ABBA fan, Sally (Donna Berlin) who is Peter’s lesbian friend, Jodie (Rose Shalloo) a nervous overtalking actor, Christian (Andrew Horton) a photographer who drives a wedge between Edward and Peter and Mrs Campbell (Tariye Peterside) the old piano player. There are a couple of voice overs, by the famous Miriam Margoyles (Nan) and Paul O’Grady (the Radio DJ).
In this performance Mrs Campbell (Tariye Peterside ) was played by the understudy for this role, but for me she was the star of the show. Her natural hilarity had me in stitches from her one liners to her head nodding.
The stage was a simple but effective set using the word ABBA as the main feature and using a revolving stage to move between scenes.
All the way through you were given snippets of ABBA songs every time the stage revolved round to another scene. I was really hoping that this was gearing you up for a grand finale from the tribute band with a few ABBA songs at the end and was a bit disappointed when this didn’t really happen. However, having said this the play is all about the comedy element and this certainly did not disappoint. The hilarity from the audience shows that they got this spot on.