Veteran actress Sian Phillips was so taken with performing Marlene Dietrich that she evolved her own cabaret, reports CHARLES HUTCHINSON

IT can not be often that York Theatre Royal's principal production of the summer is stopped in its tracks to accommodate a one-night stand.

However, this will be the case next Thursday when Peter Shaffer's Amadeus and its cast of 23 make way for British stage and screen star Sian Phillips in her sophisticated concert show Falling In Love Again.

Inspired by her success starring in Marlene, actress Sian Phillips will take a sometimes autobiographical musical journey through the vagaries of life and love, reflecting on the roles she has played and singing songs by Kurt Weill, Rodgers and Hart, Stephen Sondheim, Noel Coward, Jacques Brel, Joni Mitchell and Billy Joel.

"We've been touring the show for four years under the same title but we're rehearsing at the moment because most of the programme is new," says Sian, her luxuriant voice living up to the New York Observer's description of its having "the throb of a mandolin".

"Because all the publicity has already been done for this short tour, we couldn't change the title but then the content's not that different. It's still about life and love and relationships, with songs about love, as all songs are about love, aren't they?"

It may come as a surprise to learn that until Falling In Love Again, Sian Phillips had never performed her own cabaret show.

"At the end of Marlene, each show I had to do a half-hour cabaret and most people assumed that I'd already done cabaret, but at the time I hadn't. People kept asking me if I would do a cabaret show, thinking that I did, so I started this show," she says.

Sian, who will be 69 this year, has performed Falling In Love Again in Britain and abroad, not least in the Firebird Caf on 46th Street in New York, where she would present two 50-minute sets a night. Soon she is to do 20-minute cabaret turns at Conran in London.

Next Thursday in York, she will be presenting the full, two-hour concert version but she reckons that without her time playing Marlene Dietrich in Marlene, she might never have done the show at all.

"I couldn't have done it without doing Marlene. I got to know through friends of hers the problems she faced when performing, and I have in my possession some letters that she would send to theatres in advance saying how she would like the stage to be lit and listing her other requirements, but then at that time you could be a diva," says Sian.

"Now, my musical director and pianist, Kevin Ames, and I do all the technical side ourselves with the theatre's technical staff, rehearsing the full show and then doing the show, so it's a very intensive five hours."

Sian has grown to cherish doing the show, with its blend of music and anecdotes about her playing Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, Virginia Woolf, Lady Churchill, Mrs Simpson and Mrs Patrick Campbell.

"It took me a year before I got used to performing a show like this, as it's very different from acting, but now I love it; I like that feeling of communicating with the audience," she says.

Maybe it is best not to analyse too deeply and just go out and perform. After all, that policy worked when playing Marlene. "It's not about impersonation. It's such a mysterious thing: I never thought too much about it before playing her," Sian says. "It was a costume change and then I did her. I was told it was uncanny but you can't say how you do it."

Sian Phillips, Falling In Love Again, York Theatre Royal, July 31, 7.30pm. Tickets: £12 to £16; ring 01904 623568. After the show Sian will sign copies of her autobiography.

Updated: 10:29 Friday, July 25, 2003