The Stage

Tell Me on a Sunday

Published Friday 3 September 2010 at 12:40 by Mark Shenton

“Dreams never run on time,” Claire Sweeney sings at the end of Tell Me on a Sunday, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s 1981 song cycle about a single British woman looking for love in all the wrong places in New York and LA. It’s fair to say that Sweeney’s voice didn’t always run in time with the music, either, at this matinee performance.

But then this is an incredibly demanding role, full of quick changes of costume but more sustained vocal lines and emotional moods to accommodate, and Sweeney otherwise offers a tour de force performance, which she is currently offering in a series of mostly one and two-night stands after a sell-out, week-long launch at Northampton’s snug Royal Theatre.

The role has been subtly adjusted to accommodate Sweeney’s Liverpudlian roots and accent, with references to Merseyside and Liverpool added. Further adjustments have been made to bring the show up to date since it originally premiered, so for instance, the letters home to Mum that provide a narrative peg for her failed romances have become emails. (Note to the director: a reference to dining at New York’s Tavern on the Green needs to be changed, too - it recently closed down).

Some of these changes were made when the show - originally written as a TV vehicle for Marti Webb, and subsequently comprising the first act only of Song & Dance - was last revived in the West End as a stand-alone vehicle for Denise Van Outen. Those are big boots to fill, and Sweeney has been deftly directed by Tamara Harvey to negotiate Janet Bird’s cluttered set and the even more cluttered emotions of her downtrodden but resilient character, a sister in arms to the title character of Sweet Charity, who is back in the West End.

Lloyd Webber, working for the first time with a different living lyricist after his trilogy of hits with Tim Rice and his subsequent independent effort with the long-deceased TS Eliot, found an ideal new voice in Don Black, whose easy, conversational lyrics prompted him to some of the best individual songs in his repertoire, such as You Made Me Think You were in Love, Nothing Like You’ve Ever Known, Married Man and Unexpected Song. The result is once again an expected delight, and regional audiences should embrace the chance to hear this gorgeous score again.