Review | Here You Come Again at Chichester Festival Theatre: Dolly Parton musical is 'a fitting tribute to a living legend'

Virtually beloved by everybody, and with a back catalogue as bulging as her brassiere, it’s about time the Queen of Country had a musical dedicated to her (the 9 to 5 stage adaptation she wrote notwithstanding).

This love letter to the backwoods Barbie was conceived during the pandemic by Emmy winner Bruce Vilanch, who wrote for Dolly’s TV variety show in the ’80s, and Tony nominee Gabriel Barre, whose wife Tricia Paoluccio had dreamed of playing Parton onstage since she was a little girl.

But this was more than just a nepotistic experiment – turns out she does an uncannily good impression of the siliconed songstress.

In this jukebox musical, adapted for UK tastes by Gimme Gimme Gimme writer Jonathan Harvey, Tricia’s Dolly is a Mary Poppins figure to diehard fan Kevin in his time of need during the depths of lockdown.

Recently dumped by his ‘red flag’ boyfriend, furloughed from his job as a waiter at a comedy club and living in his parents’ attic, surrounded by childhood effigies of his icon, the would-be emcee is in for a shock when one poster comes to life and shows him how to find the rainbow at the end of the rainstorm, to misquote a Dollyism.

And what better way to do it than through the lyrics of her songs?

Some meld with the plot more seamlessly than others – Jolene is a bit of a stretch – but Islands in the Stream had the crowd waving their phone torch lights about and I Will Always Love You was delivered with gusto by Paoluccio.

I also particularly enjoyed the forays off the beaten track of Dolly's discography, such as an amusingly spooky rendition of Me and Little Andy, about the deaths of a girl and her dog.

But it turned out one song was more prophetic than even the musical’s writers could have intended.

During Light of a Clear Blue Morning – the show's climax – Steven Webb, playing Kevin, accidentally knocked over a stack of boxes which toppled into the crowd.

Luckily, no-one was sat in the seats where they landed – and you could almost see the relief on Webb’s face when he sang ‘everything is going to be alright’ over and over again.

The West End prodigy, who was charm personified as the awkward yet charismatic Kevin, handled what could have been a disastrous moment like a pro – ad-libbing a joke about saving his favourite vinyl and bringing it home for the obligatory Dolly megamix encore.

Keeping it real: the plot is at times as thin as Dolly’s waist, and while the costumes were top-notch, some wigs needed supersizing; as the lady herself would say, ‘the higher the hair, the closer to heaven’.

But was I entertained? Thoroughly.

A fitting tribute to a living legend, and a fab night out for any Dolly fans.

Until Saturday, November 16.