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<small>[ 20 December 2003, 05:44 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Thanks a lot Dave. In general the length of a piece should not matter and I have been to dance performances which are 50-70 minutes and not felt short-changed, becuase it was the "right" length for the piece. However, with a show like this, people will have expectations as to length and the 70 minute duration could prove a problem, as you say.

<small>[ 10 April 2003, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Nutcracker runs for 90 minutes. But if you take out all the kid numbers, you'll end up with less than 70 minutes of professional dancing.

I think it is probably generally accepted that dance pieces are shorter than things like musicals. I saw tell Me on a Sunday when it was part of Song and Dance and the length was about right as a first half but again i would probably feel short-changed if I saw this on it's own and had paid the same as i would for a full length musical.

Tell Me on a Sunday
By Michael Billington for Th Guardian

Twenty years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber's song-cycle about a Muswell Hill singleton adrift in Manhattan was presented as part

of a double bill called Song and Dance. Now, somewhat expanded, it stands alone as a 75-minute event; and, although it has

some good songs, it seems a slight piece that is scarcely rendered more plausible by the presence of the sassy, sexy Denise

Van Outen.

The first problem is that we never learn much about the heroine. In the new version she's an Ilford girl, keeps in touch with

her mum and has a lot of man-trouble: in a short space of time, she has abortive flings with a bumptious agent, a callow

photographer and a married Casanova.

To lose one man might be a misfortune: to mislay three looks like recklessness. But what is never explained is how, at a time

when renting a broom-cupboard in Manhattan costs a small fortune, she manages to survive without work or visible means of

support.

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The tough cookie grumbles
By Benedict Nightingale for The Times


THE critic who back in 1982 felt he had dined on a tasty starter and a classic dessert but somehow missed out on the main

course will have left Tuesday night’s performance of Tell Me on a Sunday feeling even hungrier. Twenty-one years ago, Andrew

Lloyd Webber’s song cycle was accompanied by a dance number in which Wayne Sleep twirled and whirled in a headband to the

same composer’s variations on a theme by Paganini. In fact, the whole show was called Song and Dance, and it ran in a larger

theatre than the Gielgud for three years.

I don’t know whether to call Denise Van Outen a starter or a dessert, a piece of marinated shark or a lime-and-lemon sorbet

but, whatever my feelings about her tough-girl charisma, I had to admire her pluck.

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Another review from The Indeependent sent to me by david Stewart.

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Review from The Sunday Times.

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And the Observer.

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<small>[ 20 April 2003, 06:12 AM: Message edited by: Joanne ]</small>

What a rotten Big Apple
Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph reviews Tell Me on a Sunday at the Gielgud Theatre.


I don't belong to that modish coterie that despises Andrew Lloyd Webber and all his works. He has a superb gift for melody, and has composed at least a dozen songs that will still be performed long after the mockers have shuffled off this mortal coil. And, in Phantom of the Opera, he created a masterpiece that perfectly reflects the weird Gothic romanticism of his own personality.

However, having said all that, it has to be admitted that Tell Me on a Sunday is the kind of show that gives the vituperative anti-Lloyd Webber brigade all the ammunition it needs. It's trite, it's sentimental, it is profoundly second-rate. I also find something horribly patronising about this exclusively male view (Don Black wrote the lyrics) of the female of the species.

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/04/17/bttell17.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/04/19/ixstageleft.html]click for more

Tell Me on a Sunday
By peter Hepple for The Stage


This song cycle by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black formed half of a double bill more than 20 years ago and it had an orchestra of 19. Now, only 75 minutes long, it has to stand on its own feet backed by a band of five.

I am not quite sure what this proves but I am certain that the show is hardly strong enough to go it alone, even with five new songs. The singer, Denise Van Outen, represents an English girl in her mid-twenties who goes to New York, presumably because of an unhappy romance.

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