REVIEW: Disco 2000, Hedge Maze Theatre, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★★

But funny though, right? I was under the assumption that wherever you went I would go with you and vice versa.”

I knew from the second I spotted Jacqueline Wilson’s coming-of-age masterpiece Best Friends amidst the nostalgic chaos of Hedge Maze Theatre’s set that this play was going to be right up my street, and I’m so glad to have been proven right.

What happens when the most important person in the entire world becomes that old friend you think about from time to time?’“

This is the universal question that Rosa Gatley’s exuberant and gently devastating two-hander Disco 2000 seeks to explore, complete with tennis rackets, borderline neglectful parents, and the universal exasperation felt towards every single man on Don’t Tell the Bride. Amelia and Bonnie are best friends – or, at least, they were when they were ten, before Amelia moved away. Now a young adult, Bonnie has finally plucked up the courage to invite Amelia over for a dinner party. But how can you pick things up where you left off when that chapter of your life feels a thousand miles away?

By now we’re no stranger to Fringe plays about female friendships and formative years, and it would be very easy for Disco 2000 to rely on tropes to set the atmosphere of their show. But Gatley knows exactly the audience she’s writing for, and believe me when I say that if you were a latchkey tween in the late 2000s, watching Amelia and Bonnie will feel like a sleepover with your younger self.

Stella Cohen is immediately candescent as Amelia, every bit the abrasively precocious and fiercely steadfast mate the bookworms among us would gravitate towards and with such brilliant comic timing that even Amelia’s meanest comments come off a little bit charming. It’s clear, despite (or perhaps because of) her tendency to steamroll the conversation, why Bonnie orbits Amelia even across distance and time. Arabella Finch is no less captivating as Bonnie, expertly handling the challenge of flipping back and forth like telly channels between the child and adult versions of herself – it’s clear that a lot of has been paid by Gatley, Finch, and the show’s director Kitty Sharland, into how Child Bonnie’s high-strung nature matures into barely-repressed neuroticism in her twenties, how the pseudo-grief of losing touch with Amelia has left her without a person she can truthfully be herself around, and a growing resentment towards her boyfriend – Bonnie’s other half in name only. The girls feel incomplete without each other – a standout moment for me was when, as Adult Bonnie neared the climax of her ill-fated dinner party, we could see Young Amelia begin to quite literally stumble through the dark with uncoordinated frustration, as though she’d been relying on Young Bonnie for balance.

Special mention must also be given to the show’s playlist. Never have I been so delighted to hear Avril Lavigne, Sugababes, and the theme song to The Story of Tracy Beaker in the same sitting, yet another example of how fantastically Gatley and Sharland have captured the utterly specific nostalgia of growing up in the 2000s armed only with a copy of We <3 Pop and a pink iPod shuffle. The design of the piece is straightforward but effective – with Cohen and Finch at the helm, little is needed in the way of embellishment, but the lighting, sound, and set design ties the show together wonderfully.

This is Manchester-based Hedge Maze Theatre’s first trip to the Fringe as a company, and I for one hope to see them up here for years to come. Shout out to the production team made up of Ella Raffe and Katie Tuson, whose support and contributions have undoubtedly been crucial to the success of this show during it’s tragically short run. I have to offer my congratulations to the whole HM team on a debut well done.

Recommended Drink: An Orange Calypso cup to share with your ten-year-old self (mussels optional).

Don’t miss Disco 2000 until the 9th of August at Thistle Theatre, Greenside @ Riddles Court from 11:30 (50mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.