Like many millennials, ‘Friends’ is something of an expert topic for me. Sit me in that Mastermind big chair and give me 10 of your best – I’ll get them right. To that end, then, I was incredibly excited to see ‘Friend (The One With Gunther)’. 

The premise of the piece is strong: Gunther, the self-identified ‘seventh friend’, retells the series from his perspective: 236 episodes, retold by the guy who made the coffee, in 70 minutes. The plot follows Gunther, the day after ‘The Last One’, looking back to see if he can identify what went wrong, and why his ‘friends’ have all left him and moved away. 

In and of itself the conceit should work, but writer Brendan Murphy has penned a deeply unlikeable, paranoid and angry version of Gunther who does not, to me at least, ring true to the character himself. 

 In 2023, the Edinburgh run of this show, performed by Joseph Maudsley, sold out: perhaps testament more to the enduring love people have for the source material rather than this production itself. Because sadly, for me, the execution fell short and the performance fell flat. Joseph Maudsley works hard: his delivery is lightning fast, oscillating between characters and key moments which will be familiar to any even casual viewer of the much-loved 90s sitcom. However he does not sound like Gunther, and occasionally his voice slipped into the actor’s native English accent. 

 As Gunther thinks back over the last 10 seasons, he presents impressions of the characters – not only the main six friends themselves, but countless ancillary characters, too. Often, the sign of a strong impression is one where the character is immediately recognisable. Sadly, that is not the case here for Maudsley, who relies on props which even then only do some of the heavy lifting. Each character introduces themself by name: ‘Hi, it’s Estelle Leonard here…’ which shatters the illusion further. 

 There is an uncomfortable meta element here, too: Gunther comments both in the narrative and through the device of his diaries about specific episodes (‘David? I haven’t seen him since Season 9 Episode 23’). Whilst there are undoubted fourth wall breaks written in to this show, including some audience participation, this didn’t really work as it further alienated the audience from thinking of Maudsley as Gunther himself. Key moments were missed, too, to include further elements from the show: for example, a quiz with a member of the audience missed the opportunity to make reference to ‘The One With The Embryos’ and the competition which ends in Monica and Rachel losing the apartment to Chandler and Joey. 

Doubtless there are key moments represented here, and there were audience members clearly having an absolute blast reliving some of those moments from the show. However, it left me saying ‘Oh… my… God! – for all the wrong reasons. 

⭐