Ruth Leon recommends… Song And Dance – Sarah Brightman/ Wayne Sleep
Ruth Leon recommendsSong And Dance – Sarah Brightman/ Wayne Sleep
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One of my regular contributors, Adele, found this curiosity online and lobbed it over my transom. I watched it all the way through and although I have grave doubts about the staging, (you’ll see, very old-fashioned and cramped) I had forgotten what an unusual show Song and Dancewas.
In a nutshell, Song and Dance is a musical comprising two acts, one told entirely in “Song” and one entirely in “Dance”, loosely tied together by a unifying love story.
Originally staged in the West End in 1982, it only became a single show when the two one-person shows – Tell Me On A Sunday, a song cycle for Marti Webb by lyricist Don Black and Andrew Lloyd Webber about an English girl in New York, and Variations, a solo piece composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his brother, cellist Julian Lloyd Webber – were combined.
This version, only two years later in 1984, starred Andrew’s new wife, singer Sarah Brightman and Royal Ballet principal, Wayne Sleep. Brightman was originally a show dancer and it was only subsequent to her relationship with the composer that she metamorphosed into a West End singer and leading lady, principally in The Phantom of the Opera, written for her by Lloyd Webber.
Until I saw this version of Song and Dance I had forgotten what a spectacularly good dancer Wayne Sleep was. He carries nearly all of Variations, choreographed by Anthony van Laast, before being joined by a team of dancers including Graham Fletcher, Sandy Strallen, Linda Mae Brewer and Jane Darling.
Had Wayne Sleep been taller I believe he would have become the leading British soloist at the Royal Ballet but he grew only to be 5’2”, the shortest male dancer ever admitted into the Royal Ballet School. Because of his diminutive stature, many directors were reluctant to cast him in traditional male leading roles although he was promoted to Senior Principal Dancer and performed mainly character solos in major ballets. As if in compensation, many roles were created for him by noted choreographers, such as Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Ninette de Valois, Rudolf Nureyev, Gillian Lynne, and others.
Perhaps it was only when he left the Royal Ballet and branched out on his own in a variety of dance experiments, did we understand how prodigiously talented he was. His big chance came in this unlikely hit, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance. Anthony van Laast’s choreography for him in this show was perfectly designed for Sleep’s many strengths and his height, in this instance, was no impediment.
These days Song and Dance is a curiosity but well worth watching, if only to enjoy the precision and warmth of Wayne Sleep’s performance.
The definitive performance of ‘Tell me on a Sunday’ was by Marti Webb.
Sarah Brightman and Wayne Sleep were both in Cats. It’s where ALW met his second wife and probably where the idea for Song and Dance came from. Sleep played Mister Mistofeles and Brightman the cute little cat who sings ‘little Memory’ as it’s known. The name escapes me, it’s been a while since I conducted it.
Sillabub. That was it.
I’d run a thousand miles to avoid Sarah Brightman. She has range, I grant you, maybe even tone, but she is simply the most affected stage performer I have ever seen.
A real shame that the producers of the show’s video and sound recording omitted to mention the names of the musici , not least the solo cellist in the Lloyd Webber ‘Variations’. No it wasn’t Julian.