THEATRE REVIEW: Tell Me On A Sunday - The Lowry Theatre, Salford.

This is a genuinely intriguing show, coming as it does from the composer of so many huge, West End musicals. The name Lloyd-Webber is synonymous with big casts telling a big story on a grand scale, be it the events surrounding the Messiah prior to the Crucifixion or the tumultuous life of Eva Peron in fascist Argentina. Perhaps it was because of the sheer scale of both ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and ‘Evita’ that in 1980, everything was pared down to just a single woman telling her own story in 1980’s New York. This is a very personal tale, not set against any historical events but simply one individual’s search for love after moving to the Big Apple.

Musically, ‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ does not have the massed string arrangements of certain songs in ‘Evita’, nor are there the heavy guitar sounds which mark much of both ‘Joseph’ and ‘Superstar’. What the show does have is a neat, collection of well-crafted songs, capturing various moods with strong emphasis on piano and a small band playing various instruments ranging from the saxophone to the cello. This is very much a quintessential Lloyd-Webber show with the words coming from one of the nation’s most celebrated lyricists, Don Black. Every so often, snippets seems to have been lifted from songs in previous shows but this is certainly original music, producing one or two hit singles in the early '80s.

‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ might be pared down compared to a typical West End musical but it is certainly not a small scale show. For this production, the band were on-stage but largely masked by an impressive array of 6’-7’ high very detailed models of iconic New York buildings such as the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The overall effect was to create a realistic skyline providing the perfect backdrop for the protagonist Emma’s flat. The inside lights of the buildings regularly changed, creating some very pleasing effects as well as helping to indicate the passage of time both over a typical New York day and over several weeks.

A one-person show is demanding enough but to be the sole focus in a theatre as large as the Lyric requires a special confidence. Jodie Prenger met this challenge admirably singing with gusto whilst never losing the feel of acting, as much through movement as expression. On stage for almost the entire time, Prenger moved around the set with ease, regularly changing costumes with quick off-stage interludes. The audience was enraptured as a story was being told.

The essence of the show was Emma repeatedly finding herself believing that this time she had ‘met the one’ only to have her hopes dashed. Almost as a refrain, the music dropped in intensity every time she read out a letter to her mother with a commentary of her recent experiences. The tempos of the songs perfectly matched Emma’s emotional highs and lows and as with his previous collaborator Tim Rice, Lloyd-Webber had found in Don Black a lyricist who could write conversational lyrics with personality. Ultimately, Emma’s is determined not to be ground down by bad experiences but the title of the show refers to asking to be let down slowly every time a relationship ends; that is not on a Saturday when emotions would be at their highest expectancy.

The show is only an hour long and ran non-stop with a question and answer session after the interval. This was handled very well starting with a song from ‘Oliver’ and the questions (presented during the interval) all asked by the pianist. Jodie Prenger was very much herself, relishing her Blackpool roots and bonding with the audience, who had clearly loved the show. Finally, a nice touch was to end with the understudy Jodie Beth Meyer coming to sing a Lloyd-Webber song herself and then join Prender in the duet ‘Another Suitcase In Another Hall’ from ‘Evita’.

Reviewer - John Waterhouse
on - 19.10.21