The musical tribute, “Always … Patsy Cline,” has made the rounds, but the music seems never to get old. The show is at Wytheville’s Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theatre now through March 4 and, even if you’ve seen it before, this rendition offers a couple of new faces as Patsy and her pen-pal Louise as well as a really good five-piece band.
True, Jill Mason hardly resembles Patsy Cline — she’s prettier and about half the size, for starters — but she has the pipes and, if you close your eyes, you can easily imagine yourself in a honky-tonk somewhere in west Texas listening to the real thing.
Jessica DeHart, the Rocky Gap Nightingale, is simply superb as Louise, who met Cline early in her career and kept in touch by letters through the singer’s meteoritic rise until her too-early death in a plane crash. Mason and DeHart seem to really enjoy performing with one another. Their interaction is much more subtle and realistic than in other productions I have seen of this play.
There are 26 of Patsy Cline’s songs in this production including all the classics. They include “Honky Tonk Merry Go Round,” “You Belong to Me,” “She’s Got You” and, of course, the song that will forever belong to Cline — “Walkin’ After Midnight.”
The band consists of Gage Freeman, George Robertson, Stephen Ryan, Mark Vestich and Tommy Whittle. In a word, these guys are great.
This show got me to wondering whatever did happen to all the little beer joints that I remember from nearly half-a-century ago, the run-down and dimly lit roadside watering holes where a guy could enjoy a couple of cheap beers, listen to sad country music on the jukebox, and maybe shoot a game of pool.
Right here in my neck of the woods, for example, we had the Klub Kafe, the Broad Street Tea Room, the Cliffside, the Iron Mountain Grill and Pete and Andy’s, later known as the Brushy Mountain Grill. None of them exist anymore except in memories and in the lonesome, heart-achy songs of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells and, of course, Patsy Cline.
» For reservations, call (276) 223-0891 or visit wohlfahrthaus.com.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement