Is this show really about Dolly Parton? Come again!

This show is beyond terrible – but Tricia Paoluccio as Dolly Parton is magnificent in it. She has a tremendous voice, a walk like Mae West and gives us the demeanour and delivery of Dolly. Both she and Dolly Parton deserve better.

Sadly, instead of a tribute to Dolly Parton, who has written over 3,000 songs, sold over 100 million records, won eleven Grammy awards, ten Country Music Association awards, been nominated for two Oscars, a Tony and an Emmy as well as founding projects to bring education and poverty relief to people in East Tennessee where she grew up – we have the story of a guy called Kevin, who we learn has just turned 40 with very little to show for it.

The show is set during the Covid and Kevin (played by Steven Webb) is isolated in his parents’ attic in Halifax where his mother puts food in a basket to be pulled up by a rope. (The set is very well observed – an attic full of 1980s toys – including the Big Yellow Teapot.) Kevin gets jilted by his boyfriend (who sends a text) and sacked by his female boss in a Zoom message. Then we descend into a cringe-worthy pity fest. Kevin is a failed stand-up comic -and sadly Webb is far too method with this. When his jokes fall flat he says: “Tough crowd” but that doesn’t get a laugh either. He does have a pleasant voice but it’s a tall order for a musical to have a main cast of two. As Kevin despairs of making anything of his life, Dolly, whose posters are all around his room, appears to him.

The show’s 15 songs include Here You Come Again, Jolene, 9 to 5, Islands in the Stream and the absolute triumph, I Will Always Love You. They are knitted together, not through the story of Dolly Parton’s amazing life but by Kevin’s eventual realisation that he can replace one boyfriend with another. As part of the band, backing vocalist Charlotte Elisabeth Yorke does a great job as the voice of Kevin’s mum from Yorkshire and his hard-faced night club boss from London. A tiny contribution but memorable.

Dolly Parton was, according to her autobiography, born in a shack. Her family were so poor, the doctor at her delivery was paid with a sack of corn, instead of cash. She was the fourth of 12 children. She sang in church at the age of six. A bus trip to a recording studio in Louisiana with her grandmother, when Dolly was 13, took 30 hours. None of this is in the show. It’s not about Dolly from Tennessee, it’s about Kevin from Halifax.

The story is predictable and hackneyed. The show is embarrassingly bad. When Kevin comes on channelling Kenny Everitt’s drag act – the combination of a wig, a dress and a beard, I saw four people in the stalls get up and walk out. We hadn’t reached the interval by then.

If they hadn’t gone then, they might have left later when the audience was asked to put the torchlight on their phones and wave them in the air.

Of those who stayed, many stood up in tribute at the end but the applause was surely for Paoluccio whose performance was a triumph but in a show that could have been so much better.

Here You Come Again is at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, June 29.