The Star
Published Date: 29 April 2009
There have been many other incarnations of the play, most recently, You've Got Mail, a 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
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.
Sheffield Telegraph
Published Date: 30 April 2009
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.
