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Friends! The Musical Parody

King’s Theatre, Glasgow

Four stars

 

The warm up guy has done his bit, the recording light is on, and anticipation is high for a live taping of one of the best-loved sitcoms of all time. Except, as the title of writers Bob and Tobly McSmith and composer Assaf Gleizner’s musical highlights like a prompt card waved at a studio audience, we are about to witness a loving pastiche of the show that inspired, not just catchphrases, but haircuts and lifestyle choices too. 

 

Over a decade from 1994 to 2004, David Crane and Marta Kauffman’s flatshare comedy concerning the lives and loves of a goofy sextet of upwardly mobile late twenty and early thirty something New Yorkers saw a generation of fans do their growing up alongside them. 

 

Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey are all here in Michael Gyngell’s production of a show which has now been on the go almost as long as the programme it parodies prior to this UK tour. And it is a credit to the six performers picking up the mantle that they manage to embody every physical tic and vocal inflection made familiar by the original while also managing to take the rise out of it. 

 

In its efforts to establish its credentials for Gen Z newbies as much as diehards, things start off in a bit of a guddle before settling in to a fast moving approximation of all 236 episodes of the show with extra added in-jokes and Hollywood gossip. 

 

Central to all this of course is the on-off relationship between Enzo Benvenuti’s Ross and Eva Hope’s Rachel, with the illicit tryst between Alicia Belgrade’s Monica and Daniel Parkinson’s Chandler not far behind. Ronnie Burden as Joey and Amelia Atherton as Phoebe have their own little dramas going on, and let’s hear it for 

Edward Leigh, who brings wannabe Friend Gunther to life as much as he does Tom Selleck’s moustache. 

 

There is a Friends quiz, a larger than life appearance from monkey Marcel, a soft shoe duet from Joey and his ducks, and - Oh. My. God. - a show stopping divaish song and dance routine from the divine Janice that steals the show. Oh, and there is also the one about how much each actor earned per episode. 

 

Gleizner and the McSmith’s have tapped into the 1990s vogue for doing musical episodes of hit TV shows that allowed the stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess to vamp it up with the sort of jazz hands routines they were raised on. That was before Glee took its twenty-first century Fame reboot to the logical limit, mind you. 

 

If the best gag here comes early on with the one about The Big Bang Theory - Friends’ kookier, quirkier and, let’s face it, more diverse natural heir - the best song is saved till the very end of a show that celebrates the ones that are still there for you, even after all these years. 


The Herald, November 13th 2025

 

Ends 

 

 

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