Setting steals the show

Sam Morris

Brandon Berrett Albright as Buddy Holly and Brian Gressley as Joe Mauldin, the bassist for Holly’s band, the Crickets, perform during the play, a “jukebox musical” in which about two dozen of the singer’s hits hold the story together.

By Joe Brown

Monday, June 8, 2009 | 2 a.m.

"Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story"

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I didn’t much care for “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Musical,” but it’s being performed in such pleasant surroundings and circumstances that I had a swell evening in spite of the show.

The season-opening production of Super Summer Theatre at Spring Mountain Ranch, it’s being presented by P.S. Productions, presumably because this year marks the 50th anniversary of Charles Hardin Holly’s death. The 1989 “Buddy,” which had successful runs in London and on Broadway, is an early example of the “jukebox musical,” a string of hit songs linking the story of Holly’s brief career from breakthrough as a teenage country singer turned proto-rock ’n’ roller in Lubbock, Texas, to the last show before the 1959 plane crash that claimed him, “The Big Bopper” and Ritchie Valens.

Holly is played by Brandon Berrett Albright, so impressive in last season’s “Aida,” and looks, behind nerd glasses, like a rock ’n’ roll Clark Kent. In rolled jeans and a plaid short-sleeved shirt, Albright is goofy and gleeful, playing passable guitar and catching Holly’s peculiar nonverbal vocabulary of hiccups, yelps and uh-hey-heys.

Here’s the big problem with “Buddy”: Holly’s life wasn’t particularly dramatic. Will Buddy buck the system and play his songs his way? Will he change the name of his song “Cindy Lou” to “Peggy Sue” to help his bandmate get laid? Will he eat breakfast to please his worried mom?

Watching rock ’n’ roll being born in what feels like real time turns out to be less than galvanizing, and Holly’s songs, memorable and engagingly presented though they are, are rudimentary in structure and sentiment.

“Jersey Boys” this ain’t.

Apart from the two dozen or so Holly hits, “Buddy” is a stitched-together sequence of small-scale, intimate, even throwaway moments that might work better on a small indoor stage (or on screen). But such would-be nuances come off as ludicrous and empty when amplified and played to the back row.

Perhaps influenced by the relaxed outdoor setting, director Phillip Shelburne takes an unhurried approach, and, along with vocal director Thom Culcasi and choreographer Tracey Langran Corea, he has fun with visual and musical period styles — this cast could easily plug right into a production of “Hairspray.”

The performers cope amusingly with the peccadilloes of outdoor staging, including skirts and curtains subjected to gusts from the hills, and the occasional appearance of a small bat or two.

Super Summer Theatre has elevated its technical presentation with $25,000 worth of improvements, including computerized lighting and beefed up sound. Wireless head-mounted microphones are a necessary evil, and overlooking the obvious anachronism, they over-amplify every breath — some conversations between excited characters sounded like a barn roof being torn off in a twister.

The outdoor setting offers lots of distractions during the show’s frequent longueurs — you might watch the progress of the full moon across the sky, for instance.

What’s on stage seems somewhat secondary to the Super Summer Theatre experience, a Las Vegas locals tradition for 34 years. Even apart from the blessed double-digit drop in temperature from the gritty city, prime pleasures include a family picnic feeling. Many of the audience members seem to know each other, sharing and swapping snacks and drinks. And the old-timey, small-town sweetness is emphasized by preshow stage announcements of birthdays, anniversaries and retirements, delivered Garrison Keillor style. And it’s just nice to be able to sit outside, bare feet in the cool grass, which is a rare pleasure in these parts.

Back to “Buddy”: If you miss (or somehow managed to miss) “Mamma Mia!,” this show also has a mandatory stand-up, singalong, dance-along finale, a comparatively lavishly staged crystallization of the final Iowa dance concert, with Holly invading the audience and the whole cast rollicking to “Oh Boy.”

And just as in “MM!” the final 15 minutes are designed to make you forget the occasional boredom of what came before.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the Super Summer season, which continues with “West Side Story” (July 8-25), “Once on This Island” (Aug. 12-29) and “Working” (Sept. 10-26).