'Buddy' theater review: Rave on about the music, but the story lacks ...

Just as hearing the music of Buddy Holly summons up the early days of rock 'n' roll, so does "Buddy" take you back to the genesis of the jukebox musical, when taking established hit songs and building a story around them was a new theatrical concept.

A long-running smash in England, "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story" has achieved only moderate success in the States, and a touring production that's landed at St. Paul's Ordway Center offers some clues as to why. While it's fun to hear versions of the bespectacled Texan's late-1950s repertoire played (mostly) live by the cast onstage, the script that attempts to tie it together is pretty flimsy. Alan Janes' thumbnail biography offers little insight into Holly, and, at least at Wednesday evening's performance, the touring production bore little of the energy and abandon that made rock 'n' roll seem so dangerous back in the day.

Holly arrives fairly fully formed in the first scene, a 19-year-old who knows a lot about songwriting and how he wants his music to sound. And he never really changes, all swagger and stubbornness with a dash of southern politeness.

But you don't get a strong sense of his importance from "Buddy." When we aren't watching re-creations of live performances at Harlem's Apollo Theater and the final show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, we have simplistically written scenes, only one of which offers an idea of what was special about Holly: when he's re-writing "Peggy Sue" and "Everyday" on

the fly in a New Mexico studio. That's when his imagination is on display, and that was probably Holly's greatest asset.

It's tough to build to a big triumphant climax when the audience knows that the protagonist (and two other performers, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper) are going to be killed in a plane crash within hours. Yes, the little big band onstage gives the songs a great workout with horns and multiple backup singers, but impending tragedy makes it difficult to shake off a sense of sadness. That said, the cast really cuts loose on the final two songs, leaving me wishing that they'd done so earlier.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at rhubbard@pioneerpress.com.

What: "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story"

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday

Where: Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $105-$27, available at 651-224-4222 or Ordway.org

Capsule: Not much insight into Holly, but the music's fun.

Source: http://www.twincities.com/stage/ci_23453620/buddy-theater-review-rave-about-music-but-story

gossip girl Ink Master Jenni Rivera Funeral aspergers Richard Engel Daniel Inouye steelers