Tell Me on a Sunday

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Tell Me on a Sunday
Original recording
MusicAndrew Lloyd Webber
LyricsDon Black
Productions1979 Sydmonton Festival
1980 BBC telecast
As part of Song and Dance:
1982 West End
1985 Broadway
As a one-act show:
2003 West End
2004 UK tour
2008 Off-Broadway
2008 Australia
2010 UK tour
2011 Belgium
2014 London revival
2016 St. Louis
2021 Oslo

Tell Me on a Sunday is a

Hollywood, and eventually take her back to Manhattan
.

Background

The musical is based on an idea originally conceived by

"Born Free"), had begun writing for the theatre. Although it had proven to be unsuccessful, his Bar Mitzvah Boy had impressed Lloyd Webber, who thought Black would be a good match.[1]

Rice's original concept had kept 'the girl' in the UK. It was Black who suggested she emigrate to the States. He quickly began writing lyrics for several tunes Lloyd Webber already had composed. It was their intent to present as complete a work as possible at the Sydmonton Festival in September 1979. The two decided to cast Marti Webb, who was portraying Eva Perón at the matinee performances of Evita, as their heroine,[2] and the show was first presented at the 1979 Sydmonton Festival.

Productions

Original album and broadcast

The positive reception at Sydmonton led to the show being recorded as an

album. Following this, a special performance was filmed at the Royalty Theatre in London on 28 January 1980, and later broadcast on the BBC on 12 February 1980, although it was produced in 1979 according to the credits. The broadcast was a critical success and garnered high ratings, leading it to be repeated the following month.[3] Following its transmission, the album reached #2 on the UK charts, and the single release of "Take That Look Off Your Face" reached #3. This success propelled Marti Webb
into a household name, despite being in the theatrical business for twenty years. She followed this with a number of her own albums and two further top 20 singles.

The original version was broadcast again for the first time in over 40 years, on BBC Four, in March 2023.[4]

Song and Dance

Main article: Song and Dance

Lloyd Webber decided the piece could work well on the stage if paired with another one-act piece. He previously had considered writing a brief operatic piece about the friendship between

Ruggiero Leoncavallo, going so far as to compose a melody that would later become "Memory", but decided it would not fit well with the girl's saga. He tried adapting the Charles Dickens work The Signal-Man, but decided it was too gloomy and rejected it as well. Eventually he and Black set aside Tell Me on a Sunday and turned to other projects.[5]

In 1982, the creative team decided to combine Tell Me on a Sunday with a ballet choreographed to Lloyd Webber's Variations, a classical piece based on the A Minor Caprice No. 24 by Paganini that had debuted at Sydmonton in 1977. Following some revisions, including a new song "The Last Man in My Life" and several changes to the lyrics, Tell Me on a Sunday became Act I of Song and Dance, which was staged at the Palace Theatre in London's West End. Marti Webb was again cast as 'the girl'. Over the course of its run, she was succeeded by Lulu, Gemma Craven, Liz Robertson, and Sarah Brightman. Opening on 26th March 1982 and closing on 31st March 1984, the production ran for 781 performances.

Following its closure, on 28th April 1984, a special performance of Song and Dance featuring Sarah Brightman performing Tell Me on a Sunday was filmed at the Palace Theatre and later broadcast on UK television.

Lyricist

Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, but the show failed to win Best Musical or Best Original Score. Black, unimpressed that Peters had insisted on gathering background information about the character, later said he preferred the original London production and Webb's performance.[7]

Subsequent productions as a stand-alone piece

Reverting to its one-act format, Tell Me on a Sunday was substantially rewritten, with five new songs and additional material by

Steps vocalist, Faye Tozer, and actress Patsy Palmer
.

In 2008, the Alloy Theater Company[9] staged the original one-act version with Irish actress, Maxine Linehan,[10] at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York City. That same year, Bailiwick Repertory produced the Chicago premiere starring Harmony France to rave reviews and the Kookaburra Theatre presented the Australian premiere starring Jolene Anderson, with Noni Hazlehurst and John Waters providing the voices of "Mum" and "Married Man" respectively. Despite mixed reviews, it had sellout performances in both Sydney and Melbourne.[11]

The show toured the United Kingdom, beginning on 30 August 2010 at

Royal Theatre and continuing until autumn 2011.[12] The tour starred Claire Sweeney as 'the girl' and was directed by Tamara Harvey. The script was again updated for the 21st century, and 'the girl' was rewritten as originating from Liverpool
, like Claire Sweeney herself. The song list stayed closer to the original, although a new finale was added, "Dreams Never Run on Time", itself a rewrite of the song "Somewhere, Someplace, Sometime" from the 2003 version.

In late 2013, Marti Webb performed the songs "Tell Me on a Sunday" and "Take That Look Off Your Face" at a tribute show to Don Black, where she met Lewis Carnie, the Head of Programmes for

Simon Lee
. The latest production in Mandarin, premiered in Shanghai, China in early June 2018 with musical supervision by Fiz Shapur, who also supervised the Mandarin language production of CATS.

In January 2016, Jodie Prenger starred in a revival at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury directed by Paul Foster before touring the UK. The production toured again, starring Prenger in June 2021.

Tell Me On Sunday was the first show to open in Oslo, Norway past the pandemic. It opened at Chateau Neuf Theatre on May 31 and starred Charlotte Brænna. This version was based on the definitive 2016 version and was directed by Julie Ibenfeldt Lindvik, with musical supervision by Christian Sthäler. It was translated by Christian Ranke and Martine T. Lundeberg

Synopsis

'The girl' arrives in New York City, and tells her friend that she does not want to become a hard-bitten career woman or a user of men. Shortly after, she discovers her beau has been cheating on her with numerous other women and she walks out. She meets Hollywood producer Sheldon Bloom, who takes her to Los Angeles. Sheldon's career ambitions preclude his spending much time on a personal relationship and, after realizing life in the film capital is uneventful and Sheldon has been using her as a trophy girlfriend, 'the girl' returns to Manhattan.

Back in

green card
, she is content with the noon-to-two relationship they share, until he announces he plans to leave his wife and marry her instead. She is horrified because not only does she not love him, but she realizes she's been using him, something she had vowed never to do. She sends him away and promises herself she will return to being the idealistic and ethical woman she was when she first arrived in the States.

'The girl' is the only person who appears on stage, despite having conversations with her friends and writing letters to her mum.

List of musical numbers

References

  1. ISBN 0-19-509601-0
    pp. 262–63
  2. ^ Citron, p. 264
  3. ^ Citron, p. 266
  4. ^ "BBC One - Marti Webb: Tell Me on a Sunday". BBC. Retrieved 31 March 2023.
  5. ^ Citron, pp. 266–67
  6. ^ Citron, p. 309
  7. ISBN 1-86074-468-0
    , p. 137
  8. ^ "BBC - London - Entertainment - Theatre - Tell Me on a Sunday, a first night review -". www.bbc.co.uk.
  9. ^ "ホワイトニングカフェについて".
  10. ^ "Maxine Linehan | Home". Maxine Linehan.
  11. ^ "TheWest.com.au".
  12. ^ "後世に残したい出会い体験談". www.tellmeontour.com.

External links

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