Looking For Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood ★★★★★

When Victoria Wood died in 2016, the legacy she left behind was immense. Her TV sketch show As Seen On TV was essential viewing in the mid 1980s – staying in the public consciousness way longer than its two-series run. She was adored as a comedy performer, a stand-up comedian, a TV dramatist and as a singer and songwriter. It is this final arena that becomes the focus of this beautifully crafted cabaret tribute.

Looking For Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood is a show written and performed by Paulus The Cabaret Geek, ably supported by Michael Roulston on piano. “It takes two men to do the job of one woman…half as well,” Paulus announces at the start, setting the endearing tone for the evening.

With over 400 songs penned by Victoria Wood registered with PRS, the choice of which songs to be performed is a daunting one but the show has curated a fantastic mix of the familiar (Feeling In The Mood, Shopping, It Never Would Have Worked and of course The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s Do It)) with the perhaps less well-known (Reincarnation).

Hearing these songs performed with such gusto, the show allows you to remember (and guffaw) at Wood’s unique comic take on life. Take the lyrics of Pam, tracing the troubled love life of one Pamela Patricia:

“Our wedding night, I heard a cough
There was Harold in the doorway with his ‘jamas off
Now look, I said, I must be blunt
I couldn’t give a beggar’s on the whole sex front,

Not me, not my scene
I prefer a game of Rummy and an Ovaltine
Harold, dear, do get dressed
I’ve seen one in a book and I was not impressed.“

The show’s ability to move tonally from the hilarious foibles of domesticity to its heartwrenching pathos in something like Love Song, really demonstrates the breadth and depth of Victoria’s songwriting skill:

“I remember the baby and its sticky-out ears
But I can’t single out things over the years
In Women’s Surgical by your bed
I knew that I loved you, but I never said
I brought you Black Magic, and they said you’d died
I had a cup of tea there, came home and cried
Have to go back to the hospital to collect your things
Your nightie, your books and your wedding ring.”

While many so-called tribute shows can be clinical or cynical affairs, Looking for Me Friend is neither. The accusation laid against many ‘tributes’ is that they merely leech off the talent of the original artist without providing anything other than a simulacrum. Paulus, aided by director Sarah-Louise Young (whose own cabaret tribute, An Evening Without Kate Bush, in some ways provides a blueprint for this elevated, thoughtful tribute show), offers something with much more depth than a simple collection of songs.

The setlist has been meticulously curated in a way that, combined with the storytelling between songs, becomes a logical and compelling narrative. Paulus shares with the audience how he came to discover Victoria Wood’s work at a similar time in 1980s Kent when he was making a personal discovery that he was not like most other boys. Discovering others who could rhyme off some of the many, many classic quotes became a password to a secret club and somewhere he could feel safe to be his authentic self.

One of the emotional peaks of Looking For Me Friend is his poignant and relatable rendition of Crush, a paean to young and inevitably unrequited love, set on a bus journey to school:

“The bus didn’t come
It was dead rainy weather
When it came it was full
And we didn’t stand together
And I smiled half a smile down the aisle
But you didn’t notice, did you?
Did you?“

One thing truly essential to cabaret is a synergy between audience and performer. As well as a warm, twinkly stage persona and being gifted a subject who naturally evokes affection, one thing that’s striking about Paulus is how disarmingly honest he is on stage. As well as scripted interactions, there’s something rather special in how he confides in his audience. Taken aback by the warmth of the Scarborough Spa crowd cheering and interacting right from the off, he confesses that an hour before he felt like going home. With equal candidness, he rails at Scarborough’s other theatre venue, the Stephen Joseph Theatre, divulging that when he approached them to perform his show, they demanded to read his script and replied, ‘Not for us.’ There is a spikiness to this revelation that, ironically, perhaps would have been no stranger to Victoria Wood’s own complex and far-from-cosy character.

Looking For Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood does exactly what it says on the tin and more. With belly laughs aplenty, poignancy and a nostalgic reflecting upon Victoria Wood’s genius, the show finds that sweet spot where homage turns into truly honouring our hero. When a tribute show leaves you no choice but to head home and search for its subject on YouTube, then job very well done, Paulus!

Looking for Me Friend was reviewed at the Scarborough Spa on 19 September 2025