Four Felons and a Funeral begins with something of a heist. After a long illness, Charlie is dead. His parents, while unsupportive in life, certainly intend to keep his ashes. But as we discover in the first scene, this is not to be. Charlie's best friends Millie (Gabrielle Friedman) and Wilf (Jordan Broatch) dash from his former home and onto the stage, carrying his urn, and then tear off down the road. Their driver, Millie’s practical partner Saz (Rua Barron), becomes the reluctant navigator on this escapade. Saz is uptight and anxious to the point of tunnel vision, a condition that only worsens when Charlie's sister and Millie’s ex-girlfriend, the headstrong Bex (Maddy Maguire) joins their group.

For reasons that make sense in context, the quartet hatch a plan to toss Charlie's ashes into a vat at the Guinness factory, and the play unfolds over the next day and a half as they race across the country to make this dream come true.

There’s something utterly refreshing about Four Felons and a Funeral, a new offering from Goya Theatre, which ran at The North Wall this past weekend. Besides the great music, there’s an underlying warmth and humour throughout that allows you to bond with the characters immediately, and they feel both effortlessly real and distinct. Their dialogue felt like conversations I could’ve had with my own friends, except funnier and sharper. There were several guffaw-inducing moments in each scene.

All four of the quartet are excellent, from Gabrielle Friedman, whose conflicted Millie is a luminous and warm counterbalance to the punkish Bex (Maddy Maguire, who conveys a flood of grief hidden by stoicism) and the prim Saz (Rua Barron). Barron makes Saz likeable despite herself, teasing out hints that her chilliness is far more based on insecurity than snobbery.

Jordan Broatch’s Wilf is spritely and hilarious, completely owning the stage during a frothy number about the many joys of motorway services. Elsewhere in the show, the non-binary Wilf endures a well-meaning but ill-informed character's casual ignorance about trans lives. The resulting scene deals with the conflict head-on, without feeling didactic or self-conscious. It’s the kind of perfectly pitched, delicately rendered moment where you can really tell the production was written and created by an LGBT team.

While some songs outshine the others, the music is melodic and catchy throughout, and impressively varied. There’s also a deeply touching moment towards the end that had me tearing up.

At only an hour long, Four Felons and a Funeral is somehow simultaneously a speed ride into emotional catharsis, a thoughtful celebration of friendship and a comic, toe-tapping musical.

Not to get cliched but you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll probably text your friends afterwards.