LOS
ANGELES TIMES
March
9, 2004
THEATER
REVIEW
The touring 'Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story' reaches its
peak as the career of the short-lived rock 'n' roller is ending.
By Rob Kendt
Early
rock 'n' roll isn't my music; it wasn't even my parents' music (Pat Boone and
Rosemary Clooney were more their speed). It has no special emotional access, no
reservoir of nostalgia to be tapped in this post-punk heart of mine.
So
how to explain the deep wellspring of feeling released--and not only in me, but
across a matinee audience of all ages--by the rocking final half hour of the
road-tested concert-musical contraption "Buddy: The Buddy Holly
Story," which kicked off the Southern California leg of its latest tour at
Long Beach's cavernous Terrace Theatre last weekend?
It's
no thanks, certainly, to the show's first two hours or so. Alan Janes' script
offers up soft-serve bio-drama in scenes as wispy as the sweet, willful teen
from Lubbock, Texas who doesn't want to be a country singer but a rock 'n'
roller, no matter how "colored" it makes him sound.
"The
nicest guy in the world until the subject is music," is how a fatherly
Texas deejay (David Burr) describes ornery young Buddy Holly. Why, this upstart
won't even take off his horn-rimmed specs onstage! What'll those crazy kids think
of next?
As
played by the fresh-faced Brendan R. Murphy, Buddy never seems anything but too
cute, even when he's breaking up his band or putting the moves on a record
company receptionist (Elia Saldana).
But
when he performs Holly's jangly, ardent pop confections--"Not Fade
Away," "Peggy Sue," "Rave On"--Murphy's boy-next-door
charm puts across the show's central conceit, or at least its main selling
point: that shiny, happy rock 'n' roll is as innocuously all-American as
bunting and fireworks, and that even guys with glasses--maybe especially those
guys--can rise to the top of the Hit Parade.
It's
classic American dream material, in other words, and no more so than in the
first act closer, when Holly and his band, the Crickets, turn up at Harlem's
Apollo Theatre and win over an all-black crowd--or at least, a cackling emcee
(Anthony Powell)--with a persuasively kicking set. This fraught episode is
played less for racial resonance than for fish-out-of-water laughs and
come-from-behind glory.
It's
not until its home stretch that the show really takes off. In an ostensible
recreation of Holly's last gig with a pair of touring mates--the swaggering Big
Bopper (Spencer Wilson) and the ebullient Ritchie Valens (Davitt Felder), both
of whom later died with Holly in a small-plane crash--the entire cast joins on
a bandstand in front of ruffled curtains and rocks the house.
Don
Dally's music direction pumps up Holly's tunes to rock-Broadway levels without
overwhelming them (no arranger is credited).
Admittedly,
it all feels a bit like a Lawrence Welk variety show idealization of rock 'n'
roll; this is the kind of rock show in which the frontman is more likely to
break a suspender than a guitar string.
But
it also resembles a kind of showbiz afterlife--a big jam session in the sky.
When Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens strap on guitars to rip through Chuck
Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," complete with duck walk, it's a joyous
orgy of faux-stalgia.
It's
not enough to redeem the rambling, pedestrian narrative that precedes it. But
the large-spirited energy of this iconic hoedown is enough to move us, in every
sense.
"Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story," presented by Theatre League at the Fred Kavli Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks, Thousand Oaks, Mar 9-14. Tuesday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. $36.50-$45.50. (805) 449-2775. Then at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Mar. 26-28. Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 & 7 p.m. $14.50-$40.50. (626) 449-7360. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.