Marti Webb stars with Gary Wilmot in The Goodbye Girl at the Leeds Grand. Jim Greenhalf reports.

American playwright Neil Simon has a double-whammy in Leeds next week. His latest work, Proposals, ends its run at West Yorkshire Playhouse while one of his earlier comedies, The Goodbye Girl, arrives for a week at The Grand.

This version of The Goodbye Girl differs fundamentally from the Broadway sitcom of the 1970s and the subsequent movie starring Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason; this one has songs, about 15 in all. The music is by another American, Marvin Hamlisch. British lyricist Don Black wrote the words.

The Goodbye Girl shortly ends its six-month tour of the regions with a couple of weeks in Southampton.

Marti Webb, no stranger to The Grand, plays Paula McFadden, an ex-Broadway dancer whose plans to move to LA are turned upside down when her lover sells the lease on their flat to madcap actor Elliot Garfield, played by Gary Wilmot (see the T&A's star interview tomorrow).

"It's one of those roles I always wanted to do," Marti Webb told me shortly before going on stage at Bristol. "The play has had a wonderful reaction. It's nice to see people laughing and smiling so much."

Especially in Belfast where the play had a two-week run earlier this year. "It's quite different now. I went there before when there were troubles, but it's more relaxed for the people," she added.

In the play Paula, who has an 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, is understandably miffed to discover that she could be made homeless. Elliott, however, suggests that they share the place until another arrangement is made.

That, in essence, is the plot. The whole piece turns on the comic misunderstandings of people flung together by unforeseen circumstances, and the accommodation they eventually reach.

"It's been a successful tour. I shall be sorry when the last night arrives, but I was working in pantomime before this so I have been working solidly since November. Before that I was in Evita for two years," said Marti Webb, whose glittering show business career includes nine West End appearances, four Royalty Command Performances, hit records, and popular TV specials.

The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, to quote Tony Newley, must be utterly compelling because the lifestyle of a show business star, moving from one town, one hotel to another, isn't much of a compensation. I asked Marti Webb if a normal life was difficult to maintain on the road.

"No. This is what I do. My best friend isn't in show business at all, she's a housewife in Birmingham. I have friends from all sorts of walks of life," she replied.

Okay. What happens after she's said farewell to The Goodbye Girl next month?

"I shall be on holiday, just staying at home. I have a couple of shows to do after that, one for the theatre, the other is for radio." She was reluctant to elaborate on either, perhaps because she was getting ready for that night's performance.

I said earlier that Marti Webb was no stranger to The Grand. Many years ago, for example, she starred in Lionel Bart's musical Oliver in which, coincidentally, Gary Wilmot has a special interest.

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