Review: Greatest Days, the Official Take That Musical, is at the Lyceum, Sheffield

And if you didn’t? It doesn’t really matter.

Greatest Days, the official Take That musical, isn’t the story of Take That, nor even the story of any other boyband singing the many, many hits of TT. It’s the story of growing up, of female friendship, of hopes and dreams and life‘s habit of getting in the way of them, and a celebration of the power of pop music to provide the soundtrack to a lifetime. It’s a jukebox musical yes, but a jukebox musical with heart.

The group is never referred to by name, only as ‘the band’ or ‘the boys’. The lighting, stage direction, backflips and ubiquitous matching boyband outfits means it’s difficult even to fully make out the fivepiece’s faces. Instead the band is a comforting constant, a backdrop for friends Rachel, Heather, Zoe, Claire and Debbie, characters we first meet in the 1990s as 16-year-old schoolgirls.

It’s the era of Smash Hits and Top of the Pops, of taping songs off the telly on cassette recorder and copying all the choreographed dance moves.Rachel – played brilliantly as a 16-year-old by rising star Emilie Cunliffe, and by Emilie’s own real life mum, Corrie actress and TV presenter Kym Marsh, as a 41-year-old 25 years later – dreams of getting married, creating the happy homelife her arguing parents don’t have, and settling down, preferably with any one (or all five) of the band.

Debbie, her best friend since infant school, who lives in the moment and urges the girls to do the same, has got them tickets to an arena concert to see the band perform. They take along pals sporty Claire, an aspiring Olympic diver, sensible Zoe, who loves homework and has her sights set on uni, and boy-mad fun-loving Heather, played with star quality by singer and actress Kitty Harris (whose dad was the Orville ventriloquist, Keith).

But tragedy strikes, the girls’ friendship is torn apart, and when they next meet 25 years down the line their lives have gone in very different directions to the ones they intended.

The second half takes story pointers from Shirley Valentine: the girls head off to Greece, with Rachel leaving a note on the kitchen table to let well-meaning but plodding other half Jeff know where she’s gone. There’s a touching eight-piece number, when the girls – duetting as both their younger and older selves – harmonise together on Back for Good, the casting of Marsh and her real life daughter adding poignancy to the dual role (“whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn’t mean it,” the teenagers sing, whilst their grown-up counterparts wish “I want you back for good”).

And in The Flood the now older boyband get a brief chance to seize the spotlight with Jamie Corner taking the lead on vocals to prove there’s more to the boyband than bodypopping.

For what’s an otherwise uplifting show featuring some joyous tunes and lyrics, the set design is oddly bleak. Grey concrete-coloured steps, based on the blocky TT logo, are pushed clunkily around the stage to form stairs and rocks, and beyond the women’s clothing there’s little colour to the staging. The cast must hold out their arms and swoop to indicate they’re flying in an aeroplane, and a shimmery curtain is a disappointing substitute for water in a Greek fountain.

But the sell-out audience singing, dancing and clapping along on opening night didn’t mind.Greatest Days is the perfect feel-good girls’ night out, a love letter less to a band as to the fans, and the ideal way to get in the mood for the musical movie of the same name opening in cinemas this Friday.

Greatest Days, The Official Take That Musical, is at the Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday.