TELL ME ON A SUNDAY AT THE ARTS THEATRE
So welcome this week is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s delightful show about love.
His music takes us through the life of Emma, an English girl in New York far from home and at sea with affairs of the heart. Emma opens with a gutsy musical row with an unseen informant “Take that Look off Your Face” to take the vocals through some beautiful song, “It’s not the end of the world (if I lose him) ’reprised three times throughout her sadly unsuccessful series of men It’s not the end of the world (if he’s younger) and finally even ‘ if he’s married’. But do not think for a moment this a maudlin mopey sad paean to failure. It is very funny. Emma deploys English understatement to describe some of the more outrageous of her boyfriends and she has a cheeky take on the faux jollity of American social life. ‘Capped teeth and Caesar Salad' says a lot with ‘Have a nice Day’ mockery of the US version of friendliness. I loved ‘The Last man in my life’ for its rock solid certitude that ‘this is it,’ and I adored the super sexy ‘ Come Back with the same look in your Eyes’. Of course they never do. Between the sadness, Emma sings three letters home, all with an upbeat version of her failing life.
Don Black is the lyricist with the golden touch who scripted all this brilliance. In this James Bond Week he takes credit for more 007 numbers than anyone else, a quintet of spy themed winners. But it was when partnered with the phenomenal Andrew Lloyd Webber, he got his big start. The pair worked on this week’s production Tell Me on a Sunday’ way back in 1983. Originally called Song and Dance, it was born to immediate acclaim. However long he’s been around and whatever he writes, Andrew Lloyd Webber has simply scooped the pool with his musicals, and is so clearly the frontrunner in British music by a country mile. His passionate support for theatre in the pandemic recovery has double stamped him as a man of commitment to the arts and a doughty defender of the tradition of live performanceTell Me on a Sunday,has surpassed even Rodgers and Hammerstein for record runs on the West End. To hear it is to know exactly why.
Tell Me on a Sundayis a song cycle so expressive and engaging it is a substitute play, a sequence of vocal revelations brilliantly realized to replace the need for any dialogue at all. This one- woman show runs for just an hour and ten minutes. Last night’s role of Emma was taken by understudy Jodie Beth Meyer standing in for the original Jodie, Jodie Prenger. Mysteriously we don’t know why. The reason was not apparent - or explained - unlike one performance of Crazy for YouI attended in London, where the cowboy hero appears on the high balcony, the good ol’ saloon ready to tap dance down the steps. Except he never made it. The last we saw of him was the moment he plunged down the rickety looking staircase and lay motionless on the floor. In minutes the curtain rose again to show another actor, back on the balcony poised for a hot hoofing descent. Everyone applauded.
There really is no business like show business.
But whatever was behind this Understudy’s sudden arrival last night, her substitute created an evening of beautiful music.
Jodie Beth Meyer was a sublime replacement. Tentative at first as the young Emma newly arrived in New York as she hears of her lover’s infidelity “Take that Look off your Face’ is now famous, but in the context of this delightful entertainment it deserved its celebrity. The lively one-way debate goes on. ‘Let me Finish’ imagines the lover in the room, it is a one-sided row brilliantly acted out in song. First Letter Home to England illustrates Emma’s backstory, a young English girl with parents in Muswell Hill (Did I hear that right?) who have their holidays in Folkestone and have been married for years. Jodie Beth in perfect synchrony with the small band behind her on stage did a splendid job.
The band is super talented. James Gambold recently from Oliver! and Miss Saigon - on drums and percussion. Chloe Percy –Smith of the Kassia trio brought a moody saxophone into the action and Jess Cox, the cellist with the ELO touring band since 2016 turned her cello pieces into pure gold. No wonder she’s recorded so much film music including Dunkirkand Mission Impossible. Bassist Matt Elliott has toured with the fabulous Mel Brookes’ ‘The Producers’. He is known to be relentless, whether swimming the channel (really) or cooking on Masterchef. Bass, overlooked so often, is the core of any ensemble so it’s great Matt has finally left the house to tour in this sensational show.
The show ends with Dreams Never Run on Time; it is so movingly profound and hopeful, and Emma/Jodie’s final song. Upbeat and now with an understanding of who she is and what she wants, we see her shrug on her raincoat and go off to face the world as her authentic self.
