Writers: Sam Woof & Màth Roberts
Director: Sam Woof
How far would you go to give a friend the send-off they asked for? In the case of Four Felons and a Funeral, that would be pretty far… in fact all the way to the Guinness factory in Dublin.
Four Felons is the tale of a misfit group of friends on a road trip to give their recently departed friend the farewell he asked for on his deathbed. Unfortunately, that means stealing and driving his old Fiat Punto to Ireland and dumping the ashes in a vat of Guinness at the Dublin brewery.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the four “friends” have some personal baggage between them. There’s Milly (Gabrielle Friedman), the deceased’s best friend; mutual friend, Wilf (Jordan Broatch); Bex (Maddy Maguire) the deceased’s sister and also Milly’s ex-partner; and finally, the slightly out-of-place, new-to-the-group, and rather uptight, Saz (Rua Barron), who’s Milly’s new partner.
The unplanned trip forces these four into a heightened state as they try and flee the scene of their crime and are confined into close proximity while dealing with their own grief and the unfurling challenges of their relationship with one another.
It’s a tinderbox ready to explode, and it does as each relationship comes under scrutiny. Sam Woof’s script is pitched in the comedy of the situation but the tone is actually more sombre than the marketing suggests. Whilst there are some zany antics and wonderfully comic barbs, grief is at the heart of this show, and Woof gives the right space for those emotions to be effectively explored.
Màth Roberts’ music dovetails perfectly into this narrative and offers both emotionally charged and comic songs that give depth to the scenes and drives the narrative forward. The music is contemporary show-tune in style with strong nods to Sondheim. And Roberts, who performs all the music in the show, is an off-stage delight to listen to.
The cast performs their roles very well and presents a very natural delivery across both the spoken and sung content. Woof’s direction is snappy, and the make-shift stage setting works wonderfully in representing a multitude of locations and scenes.
Four Felons is a wonderful one-act play that blends a comedy caper with a soap opera’s worth of relationship dramas all carried along on a bed of grief. May not sound like much fun, but it actually is.
Runs until 27 July 2023 and then at Edinburgh Fringe
The Reviews Hub Score
Grief with giggles
