Friends

Andrea's Theater School

A little West End theatre with a curtain that actually works.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 41714 · 2022

Pieces1,154

Minifigs4

Year2022

Set number41714

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

This one snuck up on me.

It looks like a sweet pink Friends building on the box, but you're really assembling a working miniature theatre, curtains that part on a Technic crank and all. The prop stash backstage is where the joy lives. If you want a play set with genuine imagination baked in, this delivers, and you can grab it for a fair bit under the old 99 dollar RRP now that it's retired.

Best for: Friends fans and anyone charmed by tiny working stage mechanisms

The full review

The first time I opened up the front of this LEGO® set and realized the curtains actually slide apart when you turn a little crank, I grinned like a kid. That's the whole trick with Andrea's Theater School. On the shelf it reads as another pretty pink Friends storefront, but inside it's a proper miniature theatre modeled loosely on a London West End playhouse, complete with opera boxes flanking the stage, a balcony, orchestra seating, and a lighting rig overhead. The Victorian-style facade swings open to reveal the warm-toned auditorium, and that reveal alone does a lot of the emotional work here.

What won me over, though, is the backstage. LEGO packed the wings with removable minibuilds you actually play with: a pipe organ, wigs, a rack of costumes, a megaphone, a microphone, a guitar, and a prop box holding a tiny crown and a skeleton head. Then there's the pair of swappable 16x16 backdrops. Part the curtains and you can stage either a yellow medieval castle or a nighttime cityscape, and switching between them is genuinely quick. There's a working trapdoor too, operated with a rod, for that dramatic disappearing act. This is one of those Friends sets where the features aren't decoration, they're invitations to make up a story.

A few honest gripes. At its original 99 dollar RRP, 1,154 pieces was on the pricey side, and a decent chunk of the build is the box structure rather than showstopping detail. There are two sticker sheets, and a handful of the stickers are the fiddly sort that fight you on placement, so take your time. A few of the character props miss the mark too, the tree costume and the tiger hat look a size too big perched on a mini-doll. And I did wish for a fifth character to fill out the cast. The good news is that the set retired at the end of 2023, and it now tends to sell below RRP, which is exactly where its value makes sense. If you love Friends, imaginative play sets, or anything with a clever little mechanism, this is an easy one to adore. If you build strictly for display or for engineering puzzles, it'll charm you less. For the right person, though, it's a warm, playable, genuinely inventive set, and it earns its spot on the shelf.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build breaks into four chunks: the central stage, the two side panels that double as opera boxes and exterior facade, and the backdrop plates. The side panels come together fast and get your interest early, then the central stage is where the engineering shows up. You mount two fabric curtain pieces on a rail and wire them to Technic axles, so turning the crank draws them open and shut. It's a simple system but it's satisfying every single time. The trapdoor mechanism and the overhead scaffolding for the lighting rig add a bit of technique too. It's not a demanding build for an adult, but it stays varied enough that you're never just stacking bricks.

On parts, the two soft fabric curtain elements are the headline, they're what make the whole set tick. You also get those two printed and stickered 16x16 backdrop plates, a brick-built tree, a pipe organ assembly, and a generous pile of accessory pieces: crown, skeleton head, megaphone, microphone, wig, hats, guitar, radio, and script tiles. The four mini-dolls are all exclusive to this set, with Ollie's outfit and Freya's hair getting singled out by reviewers as the nicest of the bunch. Value-wise, 1,154 pieces for 99 dollars was never a parts-per-penny bargain, but the play features carry it, and with the set retired and trading below RRP, the numbers look a lot friendlier today.

Fun facts

01The interior is modeled loosely on a London West End theatre, right down to the opera boxes on either side of the stage and the balcony seating up top.
02The four mini-dolls (Andrea, Freya, Ollie, and Professor Adrian) are all exclusive to this set and were given four different skin tones.
03Part the working curtains and you can stage two different scenes on swappable 16x16 backdrops: a yellow medieval castle or a nighttime cityscape.
04The set retired at the end of December 2023 after launching on May 29, 2022, and now typically sells below its original 99 dollar RRP.