Musically In-Clined

Always... is told in flashbacks as Louise recounts her one meeting with Cline before a show at Houston's famous Esquire Ballroom (a gigantic dance hall the size of several football fields, according to Louise). Having arrived early Louise notices a woman checking out the room and realizes it's the singer. She introduces herself to the down-to-earth Cline, and the two share a beer. In a scene that poignantly comments on Cline's naivete, Louise helps Patsy negotiate with the Ballroom management and gets them to agree to two short sets rather than one backbreaking four-hour ordeal. She takes the singer home for a midnight breakfast after the show and gets her an interview at a radio station the next morning. By the time Cline leaves town, the two are bosom buddies.

The fascinating thing about Always... is that it matches the star with a prototypical fan, a woman who might have been the speaker in nearly every Cline tearjerker. Louise's obsession with the singer is something with which any fan can identify, while Cline's music (particularly a quicksand heartbreaker like "I Fall to Pieces") explains how pop music can be like morphine for those of us on this side of the radio. You don't have to be a country listener to envy the two-year-long correspondence Louise kept with Patsy, up until the singer's death in a plane crash in 1963. (The show's title comes from the sign-off phrase Patsy used in her letters.)

For the most part, however, the dialogue written for Louise to describe what must be one of the greatest instances of female bonding on record is trite and generic: "This is a damn big place," Patsy says to Louise, describing the Ballroom. "Yes, ma'am, it is and pretty soon it's gonna be jam-packed," Louise replies. The Playwright Ted Swindley is apparently more interested in the opportunity for audience participation. He has Patsy and Louise lead the audience in a few choruses of "Come On In (And Sit Right Down)" just before the intermission.

With her patrician good looks and her ability to wear both Cline's sequined cowgirl outfits and her sophisticated suits and pumps, Ricca is a marvelous embodiment of Cline's double nature. (Anita Kessel's costumes for Ricca are great.) Cline was a torch singer who was born into the country and western tradition. Although she was only 30 years old when she died, Cline etched out a personal style, a hybrid of two traditions that was anything but Nashville cookie-cutter. The fact that it's taken 30 years for a k.d. lang to come along and try to clone her speaks of Cline's originality.

Swindley's script, on the other hand, leaves plenty of room for interpreting Louise and making her original. What Struthers egregiously misses is a chance to show us the human side of fandom. Her performance is cartoonish, unapologetic, but not without its charms. It's self-deprecating but also full of ham. In a perfect world, director Andy Rogow should have discouraged this. (And it might have been wise to excise lines like the ones in which Louise asks the Hollywood audience, mostly retired New Yorkers, to acknowledge their familiarity with Southern honky-tonks.) In the universe in which Always... exists, all that's needed is an audience in search of nostalgia. Anyone hoping for something else will be disappointed, perhaps even tempted to walk away muttering Archie Bunker's answer to lame theater: "Aw, chee whiz."

Always... Patsy Cline.
Written by Ted Swindley. Directed by Andy Rogow. Musical direction by Michael Larsen. With Sally Struthers and Rachel Lynn Ricca. Through June 20. Hollywood Playhouse, 2640 Washington St, Hollywood, 954-922-0404.