Patsy Cline is one of the greatest recording artists country music has ever produced. She had “the voice.” It’s the rare singer who can melt your heart and then restore it again in the space of three or four notes with virtually any song. Today’s crop of female singers – Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Wynonna Judd, the Dixie Chicks et al – need to sit in the back and take notes.
The trouble is they can’t. Patsy is dead. She died almost 40 years ago in a plane crash, and nobody has been quite able to pick up her fallen mantle since. Instead, we now get to go to one of the many nostalgia shows making the rounds, Always… Patsy Cline written by Ted Swingley playing at the Chattanooga Theatre Center through August 4.
The irony is that Patsy might not have been able to make it in today’s music scene, which thanks to music videos is more about shaking your booty than vibrating your vocal chords. Patsy could stand in front of a mike, not move, just sing, and cause a riot. She is to country what Janis Joplin is to blues. I did have the fortune of seeing the latter live three times, and I’ve seen nothing else like it. Janis, too, died young. In fact, American culture is replete with dead heroes, often the best in their field, who burned brightly and then flared out too soon. Nostalgia, instead of being a quaint time-passer, is an industry. Necrophilia and estate licensing are stalwartly on the march.
The crowd at CTC loved the show and is packing them in nightly. A good portion of the audience grew up with Patsy’s songs and applauded the first bar of each. Her parade of hits like “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” “Sweet Dreams,” “Crazy,” and on and on are all legends. The cast could have just read the titles, and the place would probably have gone nuts.
Shani Hedden has both the honor and unenviable task of trying to fill Patsy’s shoes. It’s almost an impossible assignment. Even Jessica Lange had the songs dubbed with Patsy’s real voice when she played her in the movie version of her life. Jessica was no fool. No matter how well Hedden can sing, there is a gap if you have heard Patsy do the same songs.
While she should be applauded for her courage in stepping up to the mark and jogging the audience’s collective memory, someone needed to apply a little acting craft to make the role more than just a watered down imitation. As Patsy, the script doesn’t let Hedden do much besides sing, so she really needed to look deeper at what may have allowed Patsy to do what she did besides having fortunate vocal apparatus. There is also the nagging question of why did she have to leave us? Why did her talent have to leave us when we needed and still need it so desperately? Immense talent like that can elevate the entire culture.
The real star of the evening is Monessa Guilfoil in the role of Louise, one of Patsy’s most ardent fans. The plot is based on a true encounter between one Louise Seger and Patsy Cline at a Houston, Texas roadhouse where the latter had a singing gig paying her $350. Today’s limo-enshrined luminaries would barely sign autographs for that amount. Times have changed. Patsy arrived for the job via taxi and had to scrounge for a ride back to her hotel. Louise suggested they go back to her place for eggs, bacon, and some good old-fashioned conversation.
Guilfoil provides a lively narration of the story, and she is ably backed up by the Bodacious Bobcast Band, where every musician has Bob for a middle name. She discovered Patsy’s music one day by hearing it coming from the television in another room, not seeing it. She was immediately compelled by “the feeling that it gave” her. And that is the key to the whole show. Everything needed to point toward creating that feeling. Hedden got little help from lighting designer Paul Hartmann who seemed to ignore the fact that lighting can have an emotional quality. Had the production team behind Hedden been more supportive, then perhaps, when the time came, Guilfoil would not have had to fake tears in reacting to Patsy’s songs. They would have just been there along with ours.