“She Loves Me” will be performed at the Montgomery Hall on
Tuesday 28th April
Wednesday 29th April
Friday 1st May and
Saturday 2nd May 2009
We are pleased to welcome back onto the team Mark Harris as Director and Andy Collis as Musical Director.
Our 2008 show at the Montgomery was set in a baker's shop - this year's show is set in a Parfumerie!
Secret pen pals blossom into a love affair in this charming musical based on the Jimmy Stewart film The Shop Around the Corner. With a cast of winsome eccentrics aiding and abetting the love stricken couple, She Loves Me is sure to prove a hit with audiences.
Book by Joe Masteroff. Music by Jerry Bock. Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.
Based on a play by Miklos Laszio. Originally directed on Broadway by Harold Prince. Originally produced on Broadway by Harold Prince in Association with Lawrence N Kasha and Philip C McKenna.
This musical comedy had a West End revival and opened on July 12th 1994 at the Savoy Theatre, the cast included John Gordon Sinclair as Georg, Ruthie Henshall as Amalia, and Tracie Bennett as Ilona.
Dress Rehearsal Photos
With Thanks to Alan Thompson for the photographs
She Loves Me Crits
The play centres around Georg and Amalia, co-workers at a Parfumerie who after getting off on the wrong foot appear to loathe each other.
They are in fact sending anonymous lonely-hearts letters to each other.
There are interesting subplots. Ilona Ritter and Steven Kodaly are having a not so anonymous fling; boss Mr Maraczek suspects his wife of having an affair and delivery boy Arpad Laszlo has one eye on a sales job and another on Ilona Ritter.
There are some great tunes. Keeley Kilby as Amalia and Louise Walker as Ritter have great voices. Their duet in, I don't know his name, was one to savour. I loved Martin Peacock's wonderfully caddish performance. I guiltily lapped up his swaggering Grand Knowing You when I should have been booing. There was also slapstick magic from Brian Burke and Mark Harris as hapless waiters during A Romantic Atmosphere.
There are some great subtle moments, which show the audience the leads' true feelings for each other. When Georg resigns from his job, Amalia looks genuinely upset, hurt and perhaps guilty that she is responsible.
When consoling her after she has been stood up, Georg (Phill Probert) stutters and appears uncomfortable as he invents a story of bumping into her suitor. Showing Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week.
By Bernard Lee
THE year before they gave us Fiddler on the Roof, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick came up with this show which was at odds with the boisterous, even brash era of musicals that had crept in.
She Loves Me is a homely, gentle love story – well, largely gentle – set in and around a 1930s Budapest perfumery, in which two constantly bickering employees don't realise they are pen pals.
It had decent initial run, then a 1993 revival Broadway and West End runs and has many doting supporters but, in truth, Bock's score with its waltzes, a tango (albeit, a hilarious one) and rumba rhythm is a little uneven.
It doesn't have a big number – the hero's title song is perhaps best known – but the heroine Amalia Balash has some lovely songs: Will He Like Me? Dear Friend, I Don't Know His Name and Vanilla Ice Cream, all relatively short.
Longer numbers like Kodaly's rather pointless ballad Ilona and the lady's response, I Resolve, can be said to verge on run-of-the-mill banality.
Sheffield Teachers' Operatic Society offer an affectionate, extremely well-staged production of the show, directed by Mark Harris, who also appears as the head waiter in the very funny Café Imperiale scene.
Keeley Kilby sings and acts supremely well as Amalia, particularly in the long stretch of dialogue early in act two with the splendid Phill Probert, playing the 'hero' Georg Nowack.
The whole cast – including Martin Peacock as Kodaly, Louise Walker (Miss Ritter/'Ilona'), David Jefferson (Sipos), Tony Gallagher (Mr Maraczek), Chris Ellis (Arpad), are fine, as is Andy Collis's orchestra.