Review: Here You Come Again at the Liverpool Empire ****

Some people spent Covid lockdowns perfecting their sourdough or turning out endless tins of banana loaf. Others learned a new skill or devoured online box sets at an alarming rate.

Actor Tricia Paoluccio, her actor-director husband Gabriel Barre and their friend, the writer and songwriter Bruce Vilanch, wrote a new musical taking both the pandemic and Paoluccio’s passion for the music of Dolly Parton as their inspiration.

The result of this burst of pandemic creativity was Here You Come Again, coming not again but for the first time to UK shores in this droll, Blighty-tweaked adaptation by Liverpool writer Jonathan Harvey.

It may be unashamedly a jukebox musical, but Here You Come Again also has a pleasing heart in the story of self-deprecating, would-be comedian Kevin (Wirral-born Steven Webb) who finds himself, aged 40, spending lockdown back in his old teenage attic bedroom after a brutal pandemic-induced break-up with his awful hedge fund boyfriend Jeremy.

The wooden, fairy light-strewn interior setting looks rather like it’s been borrowed from the Christmas market across the road on St George’s Plateau.

There (the attic, not the market) he disinfects groceries, self-medicates with anti-depressants and BOGOF booze, talks to the posters of his beloved Dolly Parton which cover the walls of his solitary eerie – and breaks the fourth wall to take the audience into his (lack of) confidence.

Liverpool audiences love a wall-breaker and certainly aren't shy when it comes to engaging. And on opening night one tiny, if perfectly timed reaction from the stalls managed to break Webb. It wasn't even a word, just more a sound.

But instead of shattering the storytelling spell, it actually strengthened the bond between stage and auditorium. That’s not, I hasten to add, an encouragement to deliberately try and put the cast off their stride. Don’t mistake it for panto.

Above: Steven Webb as Kevin. Top: Webb and Tricia Paoluccio as Dolly Parton with the Here You Come Again cast. Photos by Hugh Glendinning.

It's not a plot spoiler to reveal that Dolly doesn’t stay an inanimate two-dimensional presence in Kevin’s contracted world, instead arriving in human form (Charlotte Elisabeth Yorke standing in for an absent Paoluccio on press night) to sort out his seismic lack of self-confidence and stalled personal and professional life with some homespun words of wisdom - she puts the pep into pep talk - and a spin through Parton’s back catalogue.

If one or two of the numbers feel rather random (Jolene more a crowd-pleaser than a plot pusher and Me and Little Andy is a wacky wander into the fantastical), others underscore Kevin’s inner conflict nicely.

Yorke delivered them all with warmth, tenderness and that trademark Dolly sweetness. And while songs like 9 to 5 and the titular Here You Come Again have plenty of energy, and the Dolly and Kevin duet on Islands in the Stream is a lot of fun, it’s actually the ballads like Love is Like a Butterfly and I Will Always Love You that packed the biggest emotional punch.

A small vocal ensemble and tight on-stage band add melodic heft to the numbers where required.

An impressive Yorke also had an appealing rapport with Webb (back on the stage where it all began for him as a child actor in Twopence 30 years ago), and he clearly relishes his role and takes a character who could easily come over as simply self-pitying and instead instils in him an empathetic, engaging vulnerability.

He’s aided and abetted by the adapted script. Without having seen the American original, anyone who is familiar with Harvey’s other work, or stage or screen, will sense his voice in both this version's sly, small absurdities and its unexpectedly moving moments.