THEATER REVIEW : Lloyd Webber’s ‘Sunday’ a Slender, Woe-Is-Me Lament

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s fan club apparently hadn’t realized by last Saturday that the local premiere of one of their man’s musicals, “Tell Me on a Sunday,” was occurring in an Actors’ Company production at Burbank Little Theatre. In other words, there were a few empty seats.

Maybe the rabid fans already know that the story in “Tell Me on a Sunday” is slender--even by Lloyd Webber standards--and that the production is spartan, especially by Lloyd Webber standards. This is a one-woman show, on a barely furnished stage.

The Burbank production is based primarily on the menu of songs for the London production--which preceded the show’s arrival on Broadway, in somewhat altered form, as the first half of “Song and Dance,” in the lackluster Broadway musical season of 1985-86. Bernadette Peters won a Tony for doing the Broadway version.

Here, it’s Catherine Fries playing an English flibbertigibbet who sings about her disappointing romances in the New World.

As the show opens, Emma arrives in New York full of hope. But within a few musical phrases, she and the audience are suddenly plunged into the travails of her first affair. It’s very abrupt.

It doesn’t get much smoother or deeper. This woman never becomes more than a breaking heart. Her last line, “You don’t know me,” is all too true. By the end of a solo show, we ought to know more.

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There is no explanation of how she meets her many cads. And because we never meet the cads or hear their side of the story, the show is reduced to a woe-is-me lament, with scant recognition that her woes literally might be her own, that maybe she bears a bit of responsibility for her own life.

The melodies are unmistakably Lloyd Webber’s--you’ll hear melodic phrases that sound like snippets from “Evita” and “Phantom of the Opera.” The lyrics, mostly by Don Black but with a few by Richard Maltby Jr., are occasionally clever, more often vacuous. The titular plea, here the first act finale, is the best, albeit weepiest song.

Fries, a former Evita, sings the part skillfully, except for one moment when she must dip too far into her lower register. John Fluker is the musical director. Fries also looks right for the role, thanks in part to Melissa Tadeo’s costumes, which make more of a statement than many of the lyrics.

But Fries and director Lance Roberts haven’t transformed Emma into a dimensional character. A bit of extraneous choreography in one song is no help, and Emma’s repeated squabbles with her invisible lovers verge on the ridiculous.

*”Tell Me on a Sunday,” Burbank Little Theatre, George Izay Park, 1111 W. Olive Ave., Burbank. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 20. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.