Review: Chaffin's Barn's TAFFETAS Blends Nostalgia and Sentiment to Musical Perfection

There's nothing quite so entertaining - and nothing goes down more easily after a trip to the groaning board at Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - than a musical revue that is sure to whisk you away to yesterday. Not the day before today, necessarily, but "yesterday" as in a sentimental journey back to a time when life was somehow more innocent and somewhat less complicated than what we experience in the day-to-day of 2016.

The early 1950s were the hey-day of the girl singer and the girl group in American pop music: Connie Francis, Patti Page, Teresa Brewer, Jo Stafford, Brenda Lee and Kaye Starr ruled the music charts, along with the McGuire Sisters, the Chordettes, the Fontane Sisters and all the other configurations of young women harmonizing beautifully and rather transcendently, imparting words of wisdom about boys and beauty while sharing their wholesome outlook on the world with their fans

It's that complex, though deceptively simple, world of love and romance, dreams and ambitions, music and harmony that provides Rick Lewis' off-Broadway and regional theater hit, The Taffetas - now onstage as part of the golden anniversary season at Chaffin's Barn - with its nostalgic setting in which four young Nashville women sing and dance their hearts out in a winningly engaging production directed by the peripatetic Bradley Moore in collaboration with choreographer Shauna Smartt Hopkins.

The result of Moore and Hopkins' latest collaboration is a heartfelt tribute, both to the era and to the superbly talented performers who helped to make memorable and melodic songs such as "Sincerely" and "Where The Boys Are" chart-topping hits. Lewis has assembled a greatest hits album - a veritable hit parade, as it were - for his fictional quartet of sisters to perform in the exquisitely timed and terrifically arranged musical revue, in which the songs reign supreme with just enough patter between them to keep your attention focused on the four women onstage.

Opening with "Sh-Boom," the four Taffetas recall a musical era past, when songs such as "Mr. Sandman" (who can resist a song in which Liberace is considered a heartthrob?), "The Three Belles" (which was a country hit for The Browns - Jim Ed and his sisters Maxine and Bonnie), "Tonight You Belong to Me" (the girls are in perfect harmony), "Mockingbird Hill," (which features Jaclyn Lisenby Brown on acoustic guitar) and the Act 2 opener "Music, Music, Music," (which reminds me of all the songs played by my older sister, Charlotte, on her behemoth of a console stereo every night as I fell to sleep as a little boy) underscored life for generations of people, whether they loved the music or were indifferent to it.

Sydney Hooper shines as the leader of this do-wop sisterhood, corralling the onstage antics of her "sisters" and delivering some of the best numbers of the night, including the aforementioned "Sincerely" and "Where The Boys Are," perhaps my two favorite songs of the era which have been cemented in my memory since I first heard them performed by the McGuires (the glamourous gangster's moll Phyllis and her decidedly more down-to-earth siblings Christine and Dorothy) and the inimitable Connie Francis, the Jersey girl catapulted to fame by her fabulous voice.

Here's a fun Connie Francis story for you, gentle readers: Back in 1987, I was flying back to Nashville from West Palm Beach, Florida, when who happened to sit next to me on the plane? The glorious, golden-throated Connie Francis, of course! She was as charming and as beautiful as I had ever hoped her to be. When I, going all fanboy crazy over sharing an armrest with her (of course, back then we were called "stalkers" instead of "fanboys"), told her how much I loved "Where The Boys Are" she leaned in toward me and serenaded me with a pitch-perfect rendition of the song. I could have died and gone to heaven right then and there, so wondrously spectacular was my life for that shining, albeit brief, wrinkle in time. For the rest of the way home, she regaled me with story after story of her life and I listened raptly.

Hooper and the three women portraying her Taffeta siblings - Jaclyn Lisenby Brown, Rae Robeson and Audrey Johnson - evoke so many memories, some long-remembered and others forgotten in the passage of time, that you can't help but be swept up in the festival of nostalgia and sentiment that exemplifies the very best of this particular theatrical genre. In other words, if you recall with fondness past productions of Forever Plaid and The Marvelous Wonderettes that you may have seen, The Taffetas will only amp up your musical heartbeat.

The platinum blonde-wigged Robeson is delightfully flirtatious as Cheryl Taffeta, showing off her lovely voice to perfection while proving once more why she's one of the most appealing actors to be found on local stages. As Donna, Audrey Johnson delivers a wonderfully timed comic performance - her character is rather unbridled,so to speak - and, as with Hooper and Robeson, she shows off her vocal chops with confidence and thorough commitment.

Brown, who does double-duty as the show's music director (the amazing Michael Holmes takes over keyboards for the run of the show and plays the role of the girls' sneezing cousin, with super-talented Bobby King on bass and the dreamy Dan Kozlowski on drums), shows off her tremendous performance style and incredible stage presence as Peggy Taffeta, earning laughs when she's playing Galaxy cosmetics spokesmodel or talking about her latest Jell-o mold and earning plaudits from the audience for her lovely vocals.

Together, the four women (Hooper and Robeson make their Barn debuts in The Taffetas, with Johnson and Brown now veterans of the historic venue) - who are in constant motion thanks to Hopkins' fun and lively choreography and Moore's well-paced and creative direction that fully utilizes every square inch of the magical floating stage at Chaffin's Barn - recreate a world in which crinolines pushed skirts out to there, where girls and their boys necked in the backseat of a two-toned convertible automobile and Mamie Eisenhower was both First Lady (the world "FLOTUS" was not yet coined in popular culture) and a role model. In the process, they pay tribute to all the women who made music during the era, providing the soundtrack to countless lives and creating magic moments via the sound of their voices coming out of a radio or rising from the vinyl spinning on a record player.

Heed my advice and go see The Taffetas (there are 27 performances to go, Robeson reminded me in the "enjoyed line" that is a Chaffin's Barn first night tradition). You don't have to save room for dessert, because these four women deliver nothing but sweetness and light - and laughs galore - with their tuneful salute to all the women who have come before them. It's ideal escapist fare for this increasingly crazy world in which we live.

• The Taffetas. Production conceived by Rick Lewis. Directed by Bradley Moore. Choreographed by Shauna Smartt Hopkins. Produced by Janie and John Chaffin. Presented at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Nashville, through April 24. For reservations, call (615) 646-9977; for further details, go to www.dinnertheatre.com Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).

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