REVIEW: 'Always ... Patsy Cline' ropes you in, a sweet dream of music, heartache and love

Of all the composers, songwriters and critics who've tried to insert an "al fine" into the effable, Martin Mull's line may be the most pithy: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

Yet how they – we – try. Undying Rolling Stone Keith Richards said "Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones; it’s in the bones.”

W. H. Auden wrote that the most beautiful melodies seem "simple and inevitable." Duke Ellington parsed it a little finer: "If it sounds good, it IS good." Bob Marley said “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."

Patsy Cline pinned down one key to success: "Oh, I just sing like I hurt inside."

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That's not to say she wasn't actually suffering, as has been made plain in retellings  of her life, including the 1989 documentary "The Real Patsy Cline," the 2017 documentary "Patsy Cline: American Masters," and biographies such as "Honky Tonk Angel – The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline."

Her heartache is underlined, though not over-emphasized, in the play with lots of music "Always ... Patsy Cline," now in its final weekend run at Theatre Tuscaloosa.

There's a melancholy air through even the most romping tunes – and there are about two dozen for reveries and reminiscences, lovingly re-created, but with her own youthful powers and graces, by Rosie Webber –  knowing how it must end. Yet there's an uplift against gravity's inevitability, because we also know, though Patsy died tragically, in a 1963 plane crash, how her voice transcends life.

During the Great Depression, the Hensley family moved 19 times in 15 years, seeking work for the patriarch, a blacksmith, who deserted the family in 1947, forcing his oldest to drop out of high school and find work in a drugstore. Later, she would tell friends her father sexually abused her. Though the family did gather one last time, it was only because of  his impending death from lung cancer, in 1956.

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At 13, Virginia Patterson Hensley – her first husband was Gerald Cline – was hospitalized with rheumatic fever. Patsy deemed it a mixed blessing: "I developed a terrible throat infection and my heart even stopped beating. The doctor put me in an oxygen tent. You might say it was my return to the living after several days that launched me as a singer. The fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith's."

Her first husband couldn't get reconcile with the relentless road schedule. Alcohol abuse, physical fights and jealousies marred her second marriage, to Charlie Dick. From a terrible 1961 car crash, Patsy suffered extensive facial injuries, a broken wrist and dislocated hip. At the hospital, she wasn't expected to live through surgery.

"Jesus was here, Charlie," she told her husband. "Don't worry. He took my hand and told me, 'No, not now. I have other things for you to do.' "

Her first agent-scout only allowed her to cut songs he owned the publishing rights to, so even with records sold, Patsy struggled to make ends meet. Even after the hit "Walkin' After Midnight," she owed the label almost $5,000, about $57,000 in today's dollars.

Patsy suffered premonitions of death, as recounted by pals including Loretta Lynn, Dottie West and June Carter Cash. On March 5, 1963, in looming bad weather, she boarded a single propeller Camden PA-24 to fly from Kansas City to Nashville. Premonitions failed her. West urged her along on a 16-hour car ride, but Patsy declined, saying "Don't worry about me, Hoss. When it's my time to go, it's my time to go."

So whether she actually foresaw death at 30, however the heartbreaks, abuses, illnesses, accidents and fights weathered her, Patsy sang with a voice that wasn't just grand and lovely. There was an ache, a soulful twang, a let's-commiserate-in-loneliness that reaches across generations, that can touch virtually anyone, regardless of feelings about country music, loathe it or love it.

As it has in the company's past four productions, this "Always ... Patsy Cline" gives you the life and personality to feel you've been in the room with the belt and the croon. But it's really two one-woman shows, as director Tina F. Turley pointed out, coming together mid-first act, and continuing on into the second, until they gradually part. The real life Louise Seger (played for the fifth time by Lauren Wilson) befriended and corresponded with Patsy. This is her story, about sharing laughs, letters and tears with the star.

Wilson has got this role down, clearly: Most actors find their way into a character with just a few weeks of rehearsal, or less. Though she's played Louise for Theatre Tuscaloosa's past four productions, she finds a little more each time.

This performance is more resonant, a shade more intimate. Wilson doesn't seem compelled to swell to the size of Patsy's voice, but plays contrapuntal support, a co-melody that sometimes joins, sometimes veers off on other tangents.

She inserts the names of her real-life children, Wilson and Margaret, in place of Louise's, from the script. That's something I don't remember from before, but as she's owned this role since 1999, she's earned the right.

Webber is a wonder, as locals can witness, from Annie in "Annie" all the way up to Ulla in "The Producers," widely varying character work. She's shown the larger world, too, on a still-young professional career, with national tours and other productions.

Webber nails the places where you have to mimic, as Patsy's swooning, breaking renditions have become iconic, but finds moments for a varied belt or emphasis, so you know it's live, happening now. Much as with tribute groups for the Beatles or Queen, you might get chills, knowing you'll never see the actual thing, but feeling that, in a near way, you are there.

One last quote: Tom Waits said “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

From the silvery, shivering waterfall of strings, starting over an octave above the melody, descending into and below Patsy's voice, gliding up almost hopefully, then lowering into reality, you might believe the second-act opener "Sweet Dreams" a love ballad.

And it is, kinda, a love gone flat, unrequited: "You don't love me, it's plain/I should know you'd never wear my name/I should hate you the whole night through/Instead of having sweet dreams about you."

It wouldn't hurt so good without the crisp sound mix from local entertainment business Eat My Beats, one of the cleanest, clearest I've heard in a theater. Every note was true, and as a long veteran of sound mixes, I can aver how rare that is. It's so good you might not notice, which is the point of a fine mix: You're hearing music, not musicians.

But you'll enjoy the Bodacious Bobcats, capably lead by pianist and musical director Terry Moore, spiced with lovely lead lines from Clayton Hallman on pedal steel and Katie Thielen on fiddle; backed by the airtight rhythm section of William Crawford III on bass and Paul Oliver on drums; and Ernie Turley laying down sweet guitar pickin.'             

This simple show requires an open functional set, but designer Lynne Hutton adds more, with eye-popping vintage posters and photos framing the stage, and Louise's cutaway home stocked with what appears to be period-perfect lived-in furnishings and kitchenware. Lyndell McDonald brought star lighting, making Patsy shine, and Louise glow. Costumer Jeanette Waterman recalls that even touring Patsy liked to sparkle, and kudos to stage manager Charles Prosser, who long ago played Daddy Warbucks to Webber's Annie, wrangling things unseen this time so the show can go on.

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Performances continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, in the Bean-Brown Theatre at Shelton State Community College. Because of Shelton's COVID-19 protocols, everyone will be required to wear a mask inside the building.

Tickets are $24 general; $20 for seniors, members of the military, and Shelton employees; and $16 for students and children. For more, see www.theatretusc.com, or call 205-391-2277.