Displaying items by tag: Tara A Houston

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of theater and a lot of musical performances. And because of that, people regularly ask what the best show I’ve seen is. Without hesitation, I tell them it was the 2018 Jeff Award-winning production of The Buddy Holly Story at American Blues Theater.

So, when I took my seat for American Blues Theater’s current production of Always…Patsy Cline and opened my program, I was thrilled to see many of the same names I remembered from the Buddy Holly cast and orchestra. And when I looked to my right, I was even more thrilled to see Michael Mahler - the musical director of the Buddy Holly show - seated just down the row, as he’s filling the same role with this show. I knew right then I was in for a night of good music.

Scenic designer Tara A. Houston’s bandstand - this was my first time attending a show at the theater’s Lincoln Avenue digs, which I found to be a really inviting venue - seconded the promise of a good time with its upright piano, upright bass, and lone classic silver Shure microphone just waiting for words to be sung to it. I was so excited for the music that I hardly noticed the rest of Houston’s set - a quaint mid-century kitchen tucked off to the side.

Because that’s the thing… I got to Always…Patsy Cline thinking I was just going to see yet another jukebox musical, albeit one done really well. But with this show, the audience gets a whole lot more than a standard IRL biopic.

Yes, it begins with Liz Chidester waltzing up to that Shure mic and singing into it about being back in her baby’s arms, of going out walking after midnight, of falling to pieces, and of being crazy for feeling so blue. Chidester nails Cline’s look - thanks in no small part to gorgeous costume design by Lily Walls which transports us back to the middle of the 20^th century one chic outfit at a time. And Chidester’s got a wonderful voice that gets to the places Cline’s voice got to, while mimicking that magical warmth and sheen that recordings of that era lent a vocalist. Yes, she makes a fine Patsy Cline.

And yes, the band is killer. Ian Paul Custer conducts while also adding Floyd Cramer-esque flourishes on the piano. Lior Shragg provides more than twenty musical numbers with their steady beat (and his beat-keeping becomes a plot point), joined in the rhythm section by versatile bassist, Marc Edelstein. Lauren Vogel’s fiddle goes from heartbreak to hoedown. And guitarist Nilko Andreas’ Fender Stratocaster approximates the whines of a lap steel one moment before slipping into more stately countrypolitan accompaniment.

Yes, if you go see Always…Patsy Cline simply for an overly generous and expertly played evening of deep cuts (I’d forgotten all about “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray,” but it was a highlight) and country classics (Chidester’s dreamy vocals carried me off as she harkened the Nile and “old Algiers”), you will get way more than your money’s worth.

But while all of this is going on - while Chidester and her band are transporting us with song after song - this show is also not just another jukebox musical. Instead, it looks at how those singular talents worthy of their own musical affect us, the audience.

That role - of fan, of the one experiencing the music and being transported by the artist - is played onstage by the second member of this two-woman cast. Molly Hernandez - who played Buddy Holly’s wife and muse Maria Elena in not just the 2018 production I so loved but in a more recent Marriott Theatre production of the same, and who’s graced many other stages around Chicago in the years since - plays Louise, a hilarious, hard-drinking, fast-talking, all-heart Texas gal who just loves the records by this Patsy Cline. She loves those records so much, in fact, it leads to a one-night friendship and a lifelong (not long enough, sadly) pen-pal relationship between the two women. While her character’s name isn’t on the marquee, Hernandez is the show’s MVP. She’s the narrator. She’s the heart. And she’s a real hoot - strutting and sassing and boot-scooting all over the place, giving the show a real-world grounding that even the best shows about famous people can’t provide.

What was so unexpected about Always…Patsy Cline is that it understands something most jukebox musicals miss entirely (even the one at the top of my list!): the songs aren’t really the story. The people carrying them around in their hearts are. Director Harmony France gives us the larger-than-life Patsy Cline we paid to see by looking at her through the eyes of one of the millions spinning her records on their turntable.

And that’s what’s still sticking with me… Yes, I’ll remember Chidester’s velvety vocals, Hernandez’s comic and dramatic talent, and again, a killer country-and-western band. But mostly I’ll remember Always…Patsy Cline as less of a biopic than a love letter: to fandom, to friendship, to old country songs, and to the artists whose voices keep reaching across decades to soundtrack our lives. American Blues Theater has done it again with Always…Patsy Cline, running now through June 7.