After the success of the Abba-themed Mamma Mia! and Queen musical We Will Rock You, it was almost inevitable that Take That would be next.

They were, in their Nineties heyday, the most popular British band since The Beatles and, in the world of the jukebox musical, if you have a clutch of hit songs (Take That had 16 in the UK Top Ten), you've pretty much got a hit show.

Not that the team behind Never Forget see it as simplistically as that. With a script partly written by Danny Brocklehurst (of TV dramas Shameless and Clocking Off) and elaborate on-stage special effects, producer Tristan Baker is at pains to stress that Never Forget is more than a sing-along tribute concert.

Like Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You, its plot is not directly based on the story of the band, though it hasn't deviated far - the five leads play a motley group of men with a shared dream of forming a Take That tribute act. In the Full Monty-ish journey to this goal, they face challenges to their loyalty and friendship before realising that, through playing Robbie, Mark, Jason, Howard and Gary, they have discovered who they really are.

"The audience goes on this journey with them and the message is that the journey is just as important as the end result - not everyone can be an international pop star, but that's OK," Tristan explains. "It's an important message we tend to forget in this day and age."

Quite.

He holds up the script as an example of the theatrical weight of the show, citing its similarities with Shameless: "It's that wonderful humour that comes out of adversity."

"The script stands up as a play on its own, so there's this wonderful story and wonderful characters - and then you add in the Take That music. It's a fantastic feel-good night out."

There are also some spectacular scenes involving a £300,000 rain curtain and a 10ft wall of fire, he says.

"We use quite a few effects that haven't been used in the theatre before. We really wanted to push the boundaries."

Dean Chisnall plays Ash, the "Gary Barlow character".

An aspiring singer-songwriter, he is the one who dreams of getting the band together, hoping that if they can win a music competition he could use the prize money to save his mum's pub.

Dean - most recently seen in Evita at London's Adelphi Theatre - says getting the part was "a dream".

"I was certainly a fan of their music. I don't see how anyone can fail to be," he says. "They are the one and only boy band."

Was he anxious about how the show would be received by fans?

"Because it's not about Take That and we're not trying to be them, it was OK," he says.

"We've had so much support from the public, particularly in Manchester and Stoke. Because it's their band, they love the celebration. Overwhelmingly it's a show that people enjoy and are incredibly receptive to."

And what do the band themselves make of it? Though they signed over the musical rights happily enough, there were reports when the show opened in Manchester last year that Gary Barlow had described it as having "the smell of the end of the pier about it".

Tristan says only that, "for one reason or another", Take That had decided not to be closely involved.

"If they had wanted to be involved that's something we would have looked at," he says. "We know that Jason's dad saw it and loved it, and Robbie's mum saw it in Stoke and loved it.

"I don't know if any of the band have been in or not - they've been pretty busy."

They have indeed. Take That's 2006 reformation and subsequent UK tour has seen the boys enjoying nearly the same level of success as their initial arrival in the limelight. The chance to see the real deal in action again may seem to have negated the need for a tribute show, but, as Tristan explains, Never Forget was already in production.

"I'm the biggest fan of Take That's music and I thought it was a good idea to do it back then before they'd even reformed," he says.

"In the meantime, they've become busy with the day jobs again and doing all their new stuff while we're doing all the old stuff, so it's all worked out quite well."

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