As a part of my birthday celebration, my wonderful girlfriend got us tickets to Murry's Dinner Playhouse for dinner and a show last night. The show was Always... Patsy Cline, based on the true story of Patsy Cline's friendship with Houston housewife Louise Seger. She knows I like some of Patsy's music and also dig pretty much anything to do with music history. She hit a home run too, because the show was fantastic.
On the way we had some Eminem followed by Pantera (Walk!) going just to set the tone. Yeah, I'm a metalhead at heart but you gotta get some variety man! (I like pizza, but I don't want it every night ya know?) Anywho, the venue is a place with a full buffet and bar and we quickly followed the herd of hungry, hungry blue haired people to get our food on before the show started. Of the probably 250 people there, I'm guessing about 220 were quite a bit older than us. Many obviously were Cline fans who remember her music from when she was alive. Several couples were celebrating anniversaries and 3 of them were over 50 years together. Amazing accomplishment nowadays. Kudos to them.
The play is about avid Cline fan Louis Seger meeting, befriending and exchanging letters with Patsy before her untimely death in a plane crash. It's told in sort of a "flashback" series of songs with "Patsy" and a back-up band. Seger supplies a narrative while Cline floats in and out of the set singing tunes that made her famous - Back In Baby's Arms, Walkin' After Midnight, I Fall To Pieces, Sweet Dreams, Blue Moon of Kentucky and Crazy - to name a few.
The show does a fantastic job of combining humor, sadness and reality. It offers a great chance for fans who remember Cline while she was alive to look back while at the same time giving new fans an idea of what seeing her was like.
The 2 stars, Sarah Haman as Patsy and Candyce Hinkle as Louise, were just sensational. Sarah captured the look, mannerisms and even the voice of Cline excellently. She was simply amazing. And Candyce was absolutely hilarious shaking her butt and cracking wise as she delivered the story with both the necessary emotion and humor while getting reactions from the audience and even dancing with one member.
Going in, I guess I really knew the "big" Patsy Cline songs, with only Crazy and I Fall To Pieces making the cut to be on my iPod, but there are so many songs that I sort of knew but didn't know I knew. I'll be adding some more tracks from iTunes, which is probably exactly how people did it back in the 60s when they heard a song they liked on the radio I'm sure.
So if you get a chance to see this show at some point I highly recommend you take it. If you aren't a fan of Patsy's music, you will be afterwards. And if you already are a fan you won't be disappointed and you will be entertained.
And for the record, we listened to AC/DC on the way home.
*Bonus* Here's some Patsy just for you:
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