Tell Me on a Sunday

Watermill, Newbury

From Calamity Jane at the Watermill to Annie at the New Theatre, Oxford, Jodie Prenger has now boomeranged back just across the Berkshire border to the Watermill, to take up the solo role of Emma in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s Tell Me on a Sunday.

Never intended as a full-blown musical, Tell Me on a Sunday was an experiment in creating an intimate song cycle. Consisting of 25 numbers, including some reprises, the cycle runs for just over an hour. Originally paired with a dance performance under the umbrella title Song and Dance, at the Watermill the second half consists of a Q and A session featuring Prenger and her understudy Jodie Beth Meyer.

“Too loud!” said a Watermill audience member very loudly and clearly as the five-piece, on-stage band delivered the overture. Absolutely right, so it was a relief when the band scaled back a bit as Prenger launched into the opening Take That Look Off Your Face.

Her character, Emma, has taken up residence in a New York flat with a fine view over the Manhattan skyline (beautifully evoked by David Woodhead’s set design). However, life has its ups and downs. “Just what time of night do you call this?” she snaps in Let Me Finish as the doorbell rings. Writing to her mother back home in England (this is the pre-social media age), she announces: “Me and Joe have had a bust up”. But hope is at hand: “I’ve met a film producer… He is off to California and he wants me to go with him”.

Thus the song cycle’s principal themes of love and relationships develop. It’s all ideally suited to the intimate Watermill space – or should be. But, alas, Prenger tends to over-project successive numbers at a relentlessly high volume level. There are highspots however – the title number Tell Me on a Sunday, for instance, is delivered with all the light and shade that’s sometimes missing elsewhere, and Capped Teeth ¬and Caesar Salad - a wonderful dig at faddish eating habits - is a hoot.

Continues until February 20.

Giles Woodforde 3/5