SYNOPSIS

Ross dies in a car accident while riding his bike. Watching his own funeral, his spirit sees his friends — Blake, Sim, and Kenny — seething at the hypocrisy of classmates, teachers, and bullies who tormented him yet now pretend to mourn. Out of anger, the three spray graffiti on the walls of Ross’s “enemies,” then decide to do something meaningful for him: steal his urn and take him to Ross, Scotland — the place he’d always dreamed of visiting.

Kenny hesitates, but Blake is determined, and it was Sim’s idea in the first place. They board a train from Richmond toward Doncaster, talking about how only they truly cared for Ross. When a delay causes Kenny to leave his bag on the train — with all their money and tickets — they are forced off the next one for traveling without fares.

Exhausted and broke, they meet a strange man who offers them £50 and a lift toward Dumfries if one of them agrees to be photographed bungee jumping for his company’s promotion. They accept, and Blake is chosen to jump. Mid-air, he sees Ross.

Further north, on another train, they meet three girls. Sim and Kenny quickly pair off, leaving Blake with the third, who listens quietly as he tells her about their dead friend. Moved by the story, she offers them a place to sleep for the night — an amusement park where she works. But soon the boys learn the police are after them, believing they are part of a suicide pact, echoing Ross’s death. They escape on two motorbikes borrowed from the girl.

After they separate during the chase, Kenny — who had been riding behind Sim — goes missing, and Sim turns back to look for him. Left alone, Blake, breaking their promise not to use phones, turns his on and finds a message from Nina, Ross’s ex-girlfriend who dumped him shortly before his death. The message reveals that she had been secretly seeing Blake behind Ross’s back. When Sim and Kenny return and learn the truth, anger erupts. They accuse Blake of making the trip out of guilt, not friendship, and walk away, leaving him to continue alone.

Blake walks the remaining miles to Ross, Scotland, carrying the urn. He realizes how each of them had failed Ross: he went out with Nina behind Ross’s back, Sim ran when Ross was beaten, and Kenny ignored his desperate attempt to recover his father’s deleted novel. On the beach at Ross, Blake sits beside the urn. Kenny finally finds him, warning that the police are closing in. The two sit together, wondering what, if anything, they have achieved.

Ross’s voice lingers — saying that they now have a story to tell for the rest of their lives — but whether it brings healing or denial remains uncertain.


REVIEW

I’m not sure there was ever real friendship there. With Ross gone, the bond among the boys felt hollow — something they could only build in his absence, not with him. Their journey to Ross, Scotland, felt like naming a town Joe in Montana: coincidence that fits adolescence — clumsy, sincere, aimless. If I’d sensed true connection, I would write with comfort. But friendship, like love, is mysterious — it can form instantly or never at all. Adults call it “colleagues.” Teenagers, lacking another word, just call it “friends.”

It isn’t the production’s fault. The writing offers guilt instead of depth, perhaps on purpose. The playwright gives them reasons to act, but not roots to feel. It’s like The Little Prince before he leaves his own star — still learning what friendship means.

The trip becomes a guilt-driven odyssey: Blake was secretly seeing Nina behind Ross’s back, Sim ran when Ross was beaten, and Kenny ignored Ross’s desperate attempt to recover his father’s deleted novel. These aren’t friends on a pilgrimage; they’re boys chasing relief. Their road trip plays like comic sketches — smartphones in hand but a paper map in tow. Blake sees Ross before his bungee jump — clever but hollow. When they declare that boys’ and girls’ friendships are different, it sounds absurd. What friendship? Show it, then let us judge.

And yet, I can’t dismiss it. When you’re young, belonging matters more than truth. Solitude feels unbearable. You spend time together until you learn who makes you feel safe, who you’d protect, who you’d lose yourself beside. Real friends don’t look at each other; they look toward the same horizon. That understanding — that quiet bond — never arrives here.

Maybe that’s the point. The musical explains friendship instead of living it. The audience, more perceptive than the work itself, fills in the missing emotions with their own lives. That act of recognition becomes the truest friendship the story achieves.

Still, the writer is honest enough to admit that what binds the boys isn’t love — it’s guilt. Calling themselves the Ostrich Boys might be his way of saying friendship is an illusion. If so, it’s a bleak revelation. The final message — that they’ll have a story to tell for life — feels off-key. Coming-of-age stories usually ache because growth costs something. Here, only Ross’s pain feels real. Who could date a best friend’s girlfriend and expect forgiveness? True friendship would never survive that.

The show’s most haunting inversion is that Ross doesn’t mature in death — his soul does. Watching the others, he becomes the only one to grasp guilt, loneliness, and forgiveness. The living remain unfinished. The dead grows up. Perhaps that’s the writer’s truest insight — that understanding often arrives too late.

Adolescence is radiant yet bewildering, full of insecurity and discovery. That’s why most coming-of-age tales resonate: they remind us of the pain we survived. But here, the ache feels diluted. The boys reach Ross — with Ross — but gain nothing. The ending scatters: Blake at the beach, Kenny under police chase, Sim walking away once truth lands. It feels as if the title came first, and the story bent to fit it.
They explain too much and feel too little. Growth doesn’t have to mean maturity; it can be chaos, like Catcher in the Rye. But it has to hurt.

The music, at least, carried pulse. The band’s rhythm, especially the drums, gave the show energy. The actor playing Ross was a graceful dancer; I’d love to see him in a movement-driven role. Blake’s baritone rang clearly, Sim had strength and presence, and Kenny, the comic relief, sustained a note so long it felt like defiance — holding on when the story wouldn’t.

I usually end by writing about the music and the atmosphere after the show. But for this musical, I left more confused about the intent of the story than its presentation. I wanted to praise the harmony among the four actors — the lighter, higher tones of Ross and Kenny blending well with the grounded baritones of Sim and Blake in the middle acts. The stage design suited the small theater, with props rearranged by the actors to create each scene. The production had warmth and energy; it only needed a touch of authenticity in its storytelling — some emotional truth to hold it together. If that had been there, the show could have become something truly memorable.