Dreams Found, Dreams Lost – Marti Webb at The Pheasantry, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Packed to overflowing with extra chairs and tables brought in at the last moment, The Pheasantry welcomed a musical theatre star of a bygone era in style as an opening night audience of 100 squeezed in to hear the songs that made Marti Webb famous.
And what a buzz having a full house cheering on this homegrown 74-year-old who was the first Evita I ever saw (and one of the best) when she took over from Elaine Paige in 1980. And not looking or sounding a whole lot different.
The years have been kind to Webb, the pure voice as powerful as ever with a belt that knocks you out of your chair. Lloyd Webber knew what he was talking about when he told her: “You sing in my keys” and, with Don Black, wrote Tell Me On a Sunday specifically for her.
It was their finest collaboration, a classic in miniature with every song a winner, so ageless it was revived again in 2003, and yet again, in a rewritten version, in 2014.
The one-woman, one-hour show was launched in 1982 at the Palace Theatre as one half of Song and Dance, with Wayne Sleep doing the dancing. ‘Sunday’ brought her chart success, as an album and through the hit single ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’, turning her from singers’ singer and go-to reliable performer into a star.
Tell Me On a Sunday brought Webb back to the West End at 70 playing a woman half her age when it was revived at St James and the Duchess theatres.
She gave us the two best-known numbers in this two-and-a-quarter-hour show, along with two from Evita, the inevitable ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’ and the lively ‘Buenos Aires’, as well as reminders of other shows from her past.
Half a Sixpence, her West End breakthrough opposite Tommy Steele way back in 1963, Oliver!, Cats (again taking over from Elaine Paige), Stop The World – I Want To Get Off, Godspell, La Cage Aux Folles (touring last year) and The Card were just a few of the memories she revived.
And in line with the show’s title, she dipped into material she dreamed she’d been in but wasn’t, like Me and My Girl, Follies, Cabaret, Sunset Boulevard and Mamma Mia!
It was The Card that was the excuse for calling legendary songwriter Tony Hatch up from the audience. He wrote the music and lyrics for that 1973 show and the pair did a delightful duet from it ‘Opposite Your Smile’. The 78-year-old Hatch was terrific.
To give the lady’s lungs a break in a hugely ambitious programme – I made it 28 numbers – her pianist Clark Wilkinson weighed in with two superb comedy items, Stiles and Drewe’s ‘A Little Bit of Nothing On a Great White Plate’ and ‘Ring Them Bells’ (Kander and Ebb). Wilkinson and bass guitarist Jonathan Cooper gave Webb fine support.
It might have been nerves coupled with the after-effects of bronchitis but she had started shakily, too shrill on the high notes in ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and ‘Wherever He Ain’t’ and too hurried with her showbiz stories. But whatever she took during the interval did the trick as she was relaxed and funny in a superior second set.
That opened with what, for me, was the song of the night, the beautiful ‘Limelight’, by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, which was perfect for her voice, letting the words speak for themselves.
This was not a show song but the title of her 2003 CD, a studio album she made using musicians from her Magic of the Musicals tours in the 1990s.
Finishing with a trio of 11 o’clock numbers ‘With One Look’, ‘I’m Still Here’ and ‘Tell Me On a Sunday’ made for a thrilling climax to a show that got better the longer it went. This super trouper is “still here” all right. And for a good while yet.
Jeremy Chapman
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.