ALWAYS, PATSY CLINE
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This kind of show is not so much a biographical play as an 80-minute impression. The audience knows of course that this is an actress portraying Patsy Cline, but the propensity of audiences to confuse the actor with the character–particularly when the character is a well-documented and familiar figure–sometimes makes one wonder just who is being applauded, and for what. (If this seems to overestimate audience naivete, one has only to note the number of actors who play doctors who are sought after as commencement speakers at medical colleges.)
So performance theoreticians may want to ponder the McLuhanisms in Always, Patsy Cline. The music scholars in the audience may want to index the various cross-genre embellishments in the orchestrations–a Roy Orbison bass-guitar riff here, a Jerry Lee Lewis triad there. The rest of us will probably just kick back and enjoy the music.
