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Even 60 years after her death, Patsy Cline is heralded as one of the most influential female singers in the history of country music, and as the first country singer to cross over into pop music.
Dean Regan’s A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline, playing at Stage West until Aug. 31, is a tribute show featuring 20 songs she recorded in her short eight-year career. She died at the height of her success in 1963 at the age fo 30 in a plane crash.
Cline claimed her first marriage to Gerald Cline was unfulfilling and loveless, and her second, to Charlie Dick. was passionate but also turbulent, fueled by alcohol and violence. When her song I Fall to Pieces was riding the tops of both country and pop charts she was in a car accident, that impacted her health for the rest of her life.
There is so much material in Cline’s life for a powerful musical biography, much like Stage West gave us with Beautiful The Carole King Musical, but that’s not what Regan gives us in A Close Walk, which he created in Vancouver in 1991. Instead of biographical material, Regan gives us a fictional DJ, named Little Big Man, played by Jeremy LaPalme, who, with a little patter, creates a timeline of her recording and performance career.
Patsy eventually headlined major concerts at The Grand Ole Opry, Las Vegas and Carnegie Hall, and to recreate these events, LaPalme plays three different stand-up comics, with the stalest of jokes. The production also features April Cook and Luke Opdahl as Cline’s backup singers, and an onstage band, all of whom are in top form.
To make any production of A Close Walk With Patsy Cline soar above its pedestrian script, is up to the artist who sings her. With Sarah Horsman, Stage West has struck gold. With a great deal of help from Debra Planidin-Turcios’ wigs, Horsman even resembles Cline in the various stages of her life and career, but it’s her vocal wizardry that brings Cline to life.
The first two songs, Come On In (And Make Yourself at Home) and Gotta Lot of Rhythm in my Soul were Cline, little more than a teenager who hadn’t found her full vocal range or style, but when Horsman sings There He Goes, she gives us the breathy pauses that Cline used for maximum effect. Close your eyes, and there’s no question it’s Patsy. It helps that There He Goes is one of her signature unrequited love ballads.
The first act of A Closer Walk, features such classics as Faded Love and Walkin’ After Midnight, her 1957 song that became her first major hit, and one that reinforced her image as a woman who is still in love with the man who scorned her. Cline would return to that theme many times, and it’s what made her so popular with women who considered her their soulmate.
The first act closes with Lovesick Blues, and Horsman finds the beginnings of the vibrato and yodel Cline would sneak into so many of her later songs.
The second half of A Closer Walk is strong with such major hits as She’s Got You, I Fall to Pieces, Sweet Dreams, Back in Baby’s Arms, and her breakaway gospel classic, Just a Closer Walk With You, each one receiving enthusiastic applause and cheers from the capacity opening night crowd.
Kudos to costume designer Leslie Robison-Greene who shows how Cline’s image was changed from the girl next door, to the cowgirl, then tailored dresses, and finally elegant gowns.
You won’t know much more about Patsy Cline when you leave Stage West but you will gain an admiration for her music, and you’ll understand why she is considered an icon and a legend.
A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline is at Stage West until Aug. 31.