![\"Review:](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/4stars.png\")
Grab a hankie, wipe away the tears and round up all your friends-with-benefits: after 12 years, pop sensations Fuccbois have called it a day and we are all invited to their final gig.\u00a0<\/p>\nGrab a hankie, wipe away the tears and round up all your friends-with-benefits: after 12 years, pop sensations Fuccbois have called it a day and we are all invited to their final gig.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Playing to a notional crowd of 90,000 (or as many can safely fit into Soho\u2019s cabaret basement space), the four-piece boyband are here for one last goodbye. Their loyal fans await the anthems they know and love about midnight booty calls, one night stands and the ideal way to ghost someone. Folded in are heartfelt messages to any \u201cfemales\u201d in the audience: \u201cwomen are just people, even the ones who aren\u2019t 10s\u201d.<\/p>\n
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What could have been some straightforward spoofery of Take That, Boyzone, Westlife and other two-syllable all-male chart-toppers is given a tweak or two. The most obvious is in the casting with the staunchly heterosexual Brendan, Brandon, Also Brendan and Tyler performed by writer and composer Bridie Connell, Vidya Makan, Clara Harrison and Megan Walshe respectively. They play these heartbreakers for all their worth, carrying off impressive beards and throwing chunky moves while satirising toxic masculinity, the poisoned chalice that is modern dating and all the standard boyband tropes. At the same time, these amiable idiots are working out their \u201ccreative differences\u201d as Blazey Best\u2019s stage manager Micaela tries (and fails) to keep the show together.<\/p>\n
Connell\u2019s music is the highlight here. Like those for the criminally underrated film Walk Hard, the carefully crafted lyrics and the ear-grabbing melodies form a songlist of far higher quality and variety than might be expected from the jokey premise. The obligatory self-titled stadium filler (\u201cFuccbois\u201d is not a million miles from \u201cWham Rap\u201d, truth be told) gets a rowdy cheer. More hits follow: a soulful paean to ghosting called \u201cSlow Fade\u201d, a jaunty Irish shanty number celebrating the joys of gaslighting (or does it?) and the slow wind that is \u201cThree Little Words\u201d and its tips on the perfect bootycall.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a political edge too. Performative male allyship is ridiculed in \u201cThis Is What A Feminist Looks Like\u201d (witgh a chorus featuring lines like \u201cGive us a smile\u201d and \u201cCan we have sex now?\u201d) A \u201cspecial Australian guest star\u201d joins the boys for \u201cI Hear You Girl\u201d and ends up being the butt of their arrogant behaviour. The bellylaughs are all present and correct but the points made \u2014 valid as they are \u2014 feel weak, obvious and understated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Director Richard Carroll imbibes the affair with a jaunty vibe flowing throughout, the connection always lively between stage and audience. This is a production that could work just as well in Clapham’s The Two Brewers as in Soho Theatre\u2019s main space with the frequent forays out into the audience and the use of video screens enhancing the singalong atmosphere. Listen carefully and there are faint thematic echoes of shows from over a decade ago when London vaudeville legend Victoria Falconer (his co-artistic director at Hayes Theatre Co) and her erstwhile EastEnd Cabaret partner Bernie Dieter<\/a> played this same stage.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the only drag kings-as-boyband parody at the Fringe<\/a> this year: MAN!FEST: The Drag Boyband Musical was also there suggesting that what some may have seen as a gimmick may have now become a genre. Coincidence or not, it is always welcome to see shows of this calibre from a corner of the drag universe almost entirely ignored by RuPaul\u2019s global media juggernaut. <\/p>\n Photo credit: Cameron Grant<\/a><\/p>\n Prefer BroadwayWorld in Google Search?<\/p>\n Add as a preferred source<\/p>\n \n Reader Reviews\n <\/p>\n To post a comment, you must register<\/a> and login<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Daily Beast were kind enough to call me “a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city\u2019s underground culture” and I\u00a0have been editing\/reviewing stage productions since 2010… (read more about this author)<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n