Tell Me On A Sunday
Tell Me On a Sunday Seymour Centre August 19-30; then Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, September 2-14; information from www.kookaburra.org.au
FIRST night audiences are quite different to the real people encountered at other live performances. So it can be very instructive to attend shows where the majority of those in the seats have actually voluntarily paid for them: there is most often a sense of hope and enthusiasm in the air rather than ennui or dire foreboding.
This is the case with Kookaburra’s production of Tell Me On a Sunday which was clearly enjoyed by many in the audience into which I snuck having missed the opening last week.
That said, there is an awful lot that’s puzzling about this production. First of all: why choose it in the first place? Then, having done so, why fling a virtual novice in the deep end of a one-woman show/song cycle?
It’s not so much that Jolene Anderson is out of her depth in this puddle-deep piece, but rather that she doesn’t have the experience to carry such a burden of ordinariness.
In this respect, Tell Me On a Sunday is weirdly like Kookaburra’s first ever show, Pippin in that it was always second-rate and has not improved with age. The inevitable results are enough to make your teeth ache.
Then there’s the set. A friend muttered something about having taken a wrong turn into a Retravision showroom; or perhaps Kookaburra persuaded one of its many insanely loyal corporate wallet persons to cough up for the job lot of plasma tellies. Whatever, the overall effect is of ineffectual imaginations at work: we’re in Central Park – flash up multiples of park-like scenery, etc etc.
Anderson herself if not to blame for anything except being naive or blindly ambitious enough to say yes to the offer. But she’s too young for the role and as she sings of the age gap between lover and loved, without any acting depth to enforce it, the bleeding obvious is painful to see. In essence her inexperience sinks her enterprise from the opening number (the reasonably demanding Take That Look Off Your Face) and, like the show itself, time doesn’t improve things.
Nevertheless, she’s good to listen to and, of course, great to look at, so as said at the beginning, lots of undemanding Lloyd Webber fans were obviously having a fine time. For my money, however, he’s never done anything better than Evita and that was a long time ago when he worked with Tim Rice (rather than the less than inspired popster Don Black). Looking on the bright side: it hasn’t been done by Kookaburra yet, so maybe. But then again, maybe not.
