Always … Patsy Cline
By Ted Swindley
Directed by Alan M-L Wager
“Come on, Patsy … let’s go get us a Schlitz!”
Did I know I liked Patsy Cline, country singer of yesteryear? I did not know that. This show, originally produced about 20 years ago, has escaped me until now, and now — seeing the production at the Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, Connecticut — I am a fan. From the beginning, “Back in Baby’s Arms” and “Anytime,” I realized how sweetly influenced I had been growing up hearing her songs and her recordings. I felt myself reinvigorated by both the sweetness of the tunes and the personal resonance of her story in the performance by Carter Calvert of Cline during one stop on a national tour.
The anonymity of vocals on the radio heard as a child has always intrigued me. DJs never had the impact that the singers did for me, and so often I was listening hard to the song but not to the announcer’s intros and outros. Calvert’s voice bears a close similarity to the voice I remember on hit songs like “You Belong To Me,” “If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child)” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Ted Swindley’s deceptively simple script, the story of one fan’s meeting with the singer, reveals almost as much about Cline as the songs she sang do. And in the role of Louise Seger, the housewife in Texas who provides Calvert a playing partner, Alison Arngrim delivers wonderfully.
Her character is a storyteller in her own right. She opens a window on fandom. She provides a rationale for the title. She moves us with her humor and her personal thrill at getting to befriend the country-music star. She delivers the comedy of the play and also the heartbreak that follows. It is a wonderful performance.
Music director Eric Thomas Johnson did a wonderful job leading his five-man ensemble through the music and, even when the electrical power to the town of Sharon was cut down by a storm, he and three of his players continued the show with an acoustic sound spray that made perfect music for Calvert to sing with sans microphone.
For the third time in all these many years, a power outage has influenced the performance of a play or musical I’ve been attending. The way the theater rallied was lovely — odd little footlights adorning the edge of the stage; battery-operated, music-stand lights providing enough light for the musicians and some ambient light for the two women; iPhone flashlights operating at follow spots — all so the second act could be performed for a grateful audience.
Hearing Calvert without amplification was marvelous. She has a beautiful, strong voice and she delivered her second act songs beautifully. She even managed to use props, and musical effects, play the pathos of her story without missing a beat, and deliver a well-rounded performance in spite of the difficulties. Similarly, Arngrim pulled out her comic chops and gave us a moving performance as she told Cline’s story from her own character’s viewpoint and understanding.
The entire experience was a glorious example of how live theater can become even more alive under duress and achieve its goal with an audience. I couldn’t have liked it more!
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Always … Patsy Cline plays at the Sharon Playhouse, 49 Amenia Road, Sharon, Connecticut, through Sunday, Sept. 2. For information and tickets, see the Berkshire Edge calendar, go online to SharonPlayhouse.org or call the box office at (860) 364-7469 x201.
