Review: Funny, warm love letter to ABBA hits all right notes
Enter the fickle and fabulous world of ABBA tribute acts and get ready to laugh.
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Park Theatre, London
Love, loss and longing. Three powerful sentiments that thread their way through Ian Hallard’s heart-felt love letter to ABBA, The Way Old Friends Do.
It’s a play that wears his devotion to Sweden’s Fab Four on its shiny satin sleeve as it tells the story of Peter, played by Hallard himself, and Edward, school friends serendipitously reunited in middle-age.
In 1988, the two pals tentatively came out to each other, one as gay, the other as an ABBA fan. Thirty years on they’re renewing their friendship and embarking on a new adventure together… creating the world’s first ABBA drag tribute act, Head Over Heels.
Enter the attractive, much younger Christian and suddenly their new found world of platform boots and fake beards is changed forever.
It’s a light, frothy evening’s entertainment that cleverly allows the lives of its characters to mirror (vaguely) aspects of those of the Swedish icons themselves.
Before we meet the members of Head Over Heels, however, the scene is set by a Radio DJ, voiced by the late, great Paul O’Grady. Such an impact did O’Grady have on all who saw him, a spontaneous murmur of sadness ripples through the audience as his distinctive Liverpool tones open the show.
Despite Hallard’s script boasting some razor sharp quips and laugh out moments, a tender tale of friendship and dreams lies at the heart of this mid-life coming of age.
Hallard, himself a huge ABBA fan, anchors the piece as the closeted Peter and provides the perfect foil for James Bradshaw’s no-filter Edward. Polar opposites yet convincing friends.
Both fall under the spell of Andrew Horton’s engaging photographer and fellow ABBA nerd, Christian, while a compelling Donna Berlin, as bossy stage manager Sally, stoically determines to keep the venture on track.
Rose Shalloo too gives a strong turn as she transforms from the shrill, insecure Jodie into an unlikely yet very likeable ‘Bjorn from ABBA’.
If Shalloo seems an unlikely Bjorn, Sara Crowe positively glories as the aging am-dram pianist Mrs ‘Benny’ Campbell. Called upon to play the bearded member of the troupe, it’s a role she inhabits the with relish, a phenomenal comic turn. She is a director’s dream.
Talking of directors, Mark Gatiss injects a jaunty energy to proceedings while demonstrating a shrewd eye for sight-lines and maximising Janet Bird’s crisp, classy set design and suitably camp costumes.
Oh, and let’s not forget Miriam Margoyles’ maternally dotty vocal cameo as Nan.
However, the real triumph of The Way Old Friends Do is that it beautifully captures the joyous nature of ABBA’s music, it’s bittersweet with a vein of melancholy but always infectious.
Want to see it on tour? There should really be only one answer to that, ‘I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do…’.
Tickets and tour details can be found at https://www.thewayoldfriendsdo.com/