Theatre review: Here You Come Again

Dolly Parton is hardly a stranger to writing entire new musicals of her own, but her extensive back catalogue means she'll always be an attractive prospect for the jukebox musical treatment as well. Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre and Tricia Paoluccio's Here You Come Again has already had successful runs in the US, and for its first UK national tour it also gets a rewrite from Jonathan Harvey to provide a new setting and some gags that'll make more sense to British audiences. For tonight's performance on the Richmond leg of the tour it also gets a seemingly last-minute change of gender as Kevin, a middle-aged gay man, has been changed to Kerry, a middle-aged lesbian, although to be fair that doesn't make it any less likely that the lead will be a huge Dolly Parton fan. Charlotte Yorke, who usually understudies Dolly, plays Kerry, a wannabe standup comedian whose girlfriend has dumped her in the middle of the Covid lockdown in summer 2020.

Theatre review:Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol

I said before that it takes something really distinctive to make me consider seeing one of the many stage versions of A Christmas Carol out there at the moment: A couple of weeks ago the attraction was a comedy version that largely ignored everything about the actual story; for my last show before Christmas itself, I would have thought the title Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol probably tells you all you need to know. Parton (music and lyrics) and David H. Bell's (book) musical version of the Charles Dickens story started life as a Dollywood attraction before being expanded into a full-length show, and Alison Pollard's production now gets its UK premiere at the South Bank Centre. They've moved the story from Victorian London to 1930s Tennessee and added Parton's distinctive country music sound, but it ends up a surprisingly faithful adaptation both in plot and intention.

Theatre review: 9 to 5

I don't know how many times I watched 9 to 5, the Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton movie about disgruntled office workers when I was a kid, but it must have been a lot, I have very fond memories of it. Parton's stage musical version with a book by Patricia Resnick had a brief run on Broadway and now debuts in the UK in a touring production, which this week turns up in Richmond. A huge clock dominates Kenneth Foy's set, and a video projection of Parton herself appears in the clock face intermittently to act as narrator, looking a bit like the Teletubbies face in the Sun if it had a couple of moons orbiting it. She introduces Violet (Jackie Clune,) Doralee (Amy Lennox) and newcomer Judy (very good understudy Gemma McLean,) whose working lives are made a nightmare by sexist, embezzling CEO Franklyn Hart (Mark Moraghan.)