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Eric Marchese Special to the Register
She's
still charismatic after all these years
Carpenter Center staging of 'Always... Patsy Cline' showcases the singer's raw power - and a warm personal bond.
In the 41 years since she was killed in a plane crash at age 30, the mystique of country-Western singer Patsy Cline has only gotten bigger. That means Ted Swindle's "Always... Patsy Cline," a tribute to the singer's life and career, is sure to succeed for years to come.
Giving any talented singer-actress the chance to impersonate Cline while delivering many of her greatest hits is the real draw of this 1997 show, a near-ideal blend of theater and live concert performance. Swindley's focus, though, isn't the singer herself - it's the factual close-knit friendship that developed between Cline and a Texan named Louise Seger, who went from rabid fan to dear acquaintance to makeshift manager to trusted friend and confidante, virtually over-night.
That bond - and the intriguing, yin-yang balance between the two women - is what propels "Always... Patsy Cline," which started a three-week run at Long Beach's Carpenter Center on Saturday through Musical Theatre West, with Sally Struthers as Seger and Christa Jackson as Cline. Though roughly the same age (Seger was four months older), Cline at 24 was a seasoned show-biz veteran - cool, calm, utterly relaxed and impressively self-assured. Louise - at least as depicted in "Always" - was frantic, excitable and borderline neurotic. What forged their bond was that at her core, Louise was loyal and rock-steady while Cline reserved doubts about her marriage and her career's toll on her personal life.
Swindley apparently drew his story line and the nature of their relationship from the letters Cline began writing Seger after their first meeting in Seger's Hometown in 1957. The show's title is drawn from Cline's customary letter closing "Love always, Patsy Cline." As such, the success of this show, which is at turns rousingly entertaining and endearingly sentimental, rests on the onstage interaction of the performers.
Struthers and Jackson have performed this show many times in the past few years, and their easy chemistry and comfort level are apparent from the get-go. Mugging and hamming it up, Struthers paints Louise in broad, cartoonist strokes, emphasizing the woman's outsize, buffoonish manner - obvious poetic license on Swindley's part. A key to the show's entertainment value is Struther's habit, as Louise, of breaking the fourth wall and interacting with the audience. The dynamic is clear: Louise is the clownish cutup, balanced by the solid, earthy Patsy, who, when she's not performing one of the show's 28 songs, is chuckling heartily over her new pal's antics.
Jackson is a megawatt-level talent, grabbing and holding the spotlight from the moment the first struts onto the stage and confidently belts our "Back in Baby's arms." Even while singing, she uses a back woods Virginia dialect, clipped rhythms, and vocal inflections unmistakable to Cline's style. With a winningly wry manner, Jackson's Cline is ultraconfident yet imbued with endearing humility, referring to herself as "a gal who cain't even read notes and don't know what key she sings in."
The re-creation of Cline's songs are the show's centerpieces, Jackson's voice cracking with pain in that anthemic tale of heartache, "Crazy," The slow, sorrowful " I Fall to Pieces," the haunting ballad "Sweet Dreams," and numerous others. Musical director Brian Baker ably leads an on-stage five-man combo, and Chris Beyries' expansive set design and Carin Jacobs' costumes - notably those for Jackson - bolster the authenticity of this "Patsy Cline."
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