Tell Me On A Sunday...

On Friday night Stuart and I went to see Tell Me On A Sunday at the Duchess Theatre in London's glitzy West End Theatreland.

Starring Marti Webb as 'the girl' she took us bath back 35 years to when it all began - to a zoo, that's got chimpanzees...

Tell Me on a Sunday is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black. A one-act song cycle, it tells the story of an ordinary English girl from Muswell Hill, who journeys to the United States in search of love. Her romantic misadventures begin in New York City, lead her to Hollywood, and eventually take her back to Manhattan.

Starting the show with the show-stopper Take That Look Off Your Face we knew we were in for a treat. Marti had lost little of her magnificent voice. As she gamboled through the other songs the memories all came flooding back... I'm Very You, You're Very Me... Come Back with the Same Look in Your Eyes... You Made Me Think You Were in Love...

The show is very short though. Forty-five plus encore meant fifty-five minutes after taking our seats we were back out on the street again. In previous revivals they have had a 2nd half of dancing - Song and Dance starring Wayne Sleep. This time round we didn't particularly miss the lack of Sleep.

So all in all it was a  fun, albeit short, night of nostalgia. As Stuart mentioned to me on the way out she's botoxed to buggery. So ironically she won't be taking that look off her face anytime soon!

Stephen Ward...

Last night Stuart and I went to see Andrew Lloyd Weber's new musical Stephen Ward at the Aldwych Theatre.

Set in 1963 the musical deals with the Profumo Affair, the political scandal that involved then Minister for War, John Profumo, and Christine Keeler, with whom he had an affair. This lead to revelations, resignations and the eventual collapse of Harold Macmillan's Tory Government.

The person who introduced them and who got vilified by the Establishment for it was osteopath Stephen Ward. Scapegoated by the press and the police he was soon driven to suicide.

With hindsight it was Stephen Ward who was the real victim of the Profumo Affair - not, as is widely supposed, John Profumo himself.

On paper this musical looks like an easy sell: music by Andrew Lloyd Weber, lyrics by Don Black, chequebook-journalism, the role of a free press, the sexual morality of the rich and famous, the sex lives of politicians, two-timing glamour pusses, Russian spies, celebrities who aren't quite what they seem, police corruption, the class system and social change.

Sadly it didn't really deliver. The music was sort of OK but some of the lyrics dire, Stephen Ward (Alexander Hanson) was pretty flat, the plot a mess. It looked like the piece had been the victim of rewrites and had been rewritten into a dogs dinner.

The two female leads Christine Keeler (Charlotte Spencer) and Mandy Rice-Davies (Charlotte Blackledge) were great though. It was just a shame that they were given such trite things to do and say.

At it's heart you had no sympathy for the Stephen Ward character and the six-form drama production values (did we really need him to be next to a waxwork Hitler and an acid bath murdered?) didn't help. And don't get me started on all those curtains.

Tonight's it's press night. Let's see how kind they are to it and whether it finds an audience.