BWW Reviews: ALWAYS...PATSY CLINE, A Triumph for Mandy Barnett at The Ryman Auditorium

When Mandy Barnett takes to the stage of Nashville's revered Ryman Auditorium for a performance of Ted Swindley's "musical play," Always...Patsy Cline, she doesn't so much create a characterization of the legendary country superstar - rather, she channels her. When Barnett sets foot on that historic, venerated stage, she is Patsy Cline, so completely mesmerizing and on-point is her portrayal. Clearly, if anyone was ever born to play Patsy, it's Mandy Barnett, who seemingly has been destined to play Patsy Cline since birth.

Now onstage in the latest revival of Swindley's sweetly evocative musical revue (based on the true story of friendship between superstar and superfan), Barnett and her co-star Tere Myers (who plays Cline's hardcore, kind-hearted fan Louise Seeger) take audiences on a sentimental journey of music and remembrance, immersing longtime aficionados in the music they've always loved and introducing neophytes in the audience to the artistry that made Patsy Cline a superstar during her all-too-brief life - and which continues to attract attention throughout the world.

For both Barnett and Myers, who first brought Always...Patsy Cline to the stage in 1993 (and have continued through national tours, an off-Broadway run and other Ryman Auditorium revivals), under Swindley's confident, audience-pleasing direction, the revival shows how perfect each woman plays her role in the piece, which amounts to a concert of Cline's greatest hits, glued together by a story of true friendship between the singer and her most ardent fan. Set in the early 1960s, when Cline was first making her mark on country music but was yet to achieve the superstardom that came to her, we are afforded an intimate glimpse of Patsy Cline, the woman, as remembered by a fan who first heard her sing "Walking After Midnight" on CBS' Arthur Godfrey Show.

The show opens on Barnett, as Cline, wearing a cowgirl's costume sewn by her loving mother, capturing the mid-1950s country music milieu through her performance of "Honky Tonk Merry Go Round," "Back in Baby's Arms" and "Anytime," instantly transporting audiences back in time. Even before she sings Cline's trademark "Walking After Midnight," Barnett has the audience firmly and confidently in the palm of her hand, giving them her most heartfelt renderings of the songs that effectively bring Patsy Cline to life onstage during the fast-moving musical.

When she first played Patsy back in 1993, the Crossville-born and bred Barnett was only 17 - softer-edged and rounder than the thirty-something country music star that Mandy Barnett is today. Today the role fits her like a hand-sewn white kid glove that Patsy might have worn with her smart cocktail dresses and evening gowns that supplanted her mother's home-sewn theatrical costumes. Throughout her exquisitely crafted performance, Barnett displays a mature woman's grasp of the role, taking on the mantle of Cline's superstardom effortlessly and gracefully. Her mannerisms, her presence, her gait - everything about her seems to be the essence of Patsy Cline herself. It's a stunning and staggering performance from first blush, sent completely over the top by her remarkable ability to sing those songs just as her idol and inspiration did all those years ago.

Barnett sounds just like Patsy Cline - or just like the recordings that even today are treasured by her legions of devoted fans - and she uses her own musical gifts to capture the elements of performance that set Cline apart from her contemporaries, utilizing Cline's signature musical phrasing to transform herself vocally into her idol. That she does this night-after-night in the "Mother Church of country music" - The Ryman Auditorium - only adds to the emotional impact of her performance.

And all the best-loved songs from Patsy Cline's sizable musical catalogue are performed in Swindley's show: "I Fall to Pieces," "Lovesick Blues," "Sweet Dreams," "She's Got You," "Crazy," and "Seven Lonely Days" are included, as are other songs not immediately known as Patsy's songs like "Shake, Rattle and Roll," Cole Porter's "True Love" and the Neil Sedaka-written "Stupid Cupid." Always...Patsy Cline is able to convey a sense of time and place while presenting the history of Cline's not-so-meteoric rise to fame (although we tend to think she was an overnight success, thanks to Arthur Godfrey, she'd already been toiling as a performer for nearly a decade before that hard-won success came).

Myers' Louise is a rollicking, big-hearted, good-time gal, who is able to handle her audience deftly, charming them with her droll delivery and the very real sense of friendship that epitomizes her onstage chemistry with Barnett. If Barnett seems more suited to her role now than she did in 1993, then so does Myers. In the intervening years since the two women were brought together by Swindley, Myers managed to craft in Louise Seeger a genuine and believable character who offers us all the access to the offstage relationship that flowered between the two women after a chance meeting at Houston's Empire Ballroom so many years ago.

The story told in Always...Patsy Cline is heartwarming and informative, even if it deals rather cursorily with all the events in Cline's far-too-short life. Yet it works as a musical revue and proves far more successful if viewed as an episode of her life, rather than as a complete biographical pastiche. Well-paced, with the responsibility for exposition falling upon Myers' Louise to propel the story along its way, it doesn't offer an exhaustive consideration of Cline's impact on the music industry, but instead looks at the impact her artistry had upon her fans.

Barnett and Myers (who, herself, is given opportunity to show her own vocal chops) are backed up by a tremendously talented group of musicians playing Cline's band, the Bodacious Bobcats, including musical director Brad Albin on upright bass, Andy Reiss on electric guitar and tic-tac bass, Andy Peake on drums, Stephen Kummer on piano, Paul Kramer on fiddle, acoustic bass and tic-tac bass, and Michael Jones on steel guitar. Their superb work on Always...Patsy Cline cannot be overlooked, nor can they be praised more highly for their sincere contributions to the production.

Always...Patsy Cline. Created and directed by Ted Swindley. Presented by Ted Swindley Productions at The Ryman Auditorium, Nashville. Through July 24. For further details, visit www.alwayspatsycline.com.

Pictured: Mandy Barnett as Patsy Cline at the Ryman Auditorium

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