Buddy:
The Buddy Holly Story

If you are of a certain age, and the music of Buddy Holly and his late 1950s rock 'n' roll cohorts conjures up warm memories, then you may well enjoy the production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, running through April 19 at the Westchester Broadway Dinner Theater. On the night I attended, most everyone in the audience appeared to be the right age to recall that era happily. They seemed to be having a good time, too, reliving a bit of their youth. Westchester Broadway is offering an agreeable production, fairly priced, of a modest, unassuming musical that includes such catchy Holly hits as "That'll be the Day," "Peggy Sue," and "Oh Boy." If hearing those songs again intrigues you, go!

The cast includes two solid performers—Pat McRoberts as Buddy and Ryan G. Dunkin as "the Big Bopper." The latter's cheerfully booming rendition of "Chantilly Lacy" is a high point of the show. Director Victoria Bussert moves things along efficiently.

If you're not into Buddy Holly or the songs of his era, this musical won't have much to offer you. There is a skimpy storyline, with little forward momentum. Co-authors Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson bring up various issues briefly, without ever really exploring any of them, and without tying things together so that you get caught up in any action. And they repeatedly seem to miss obvious opportunities for real drama and emotion; Holly's death in a plane crash, for example, is mentioned briefly, but then it is: "On with the show!" And everyone rushes right back into a concert sequence.

The playwrights also manage to get assorted facts about Holly's life and times just plain wrong. I don't mind artistic liberties if the show is entertaining enough, but some of the writers' errors simply seem careless; and if they're trying to generate drama, they aren't succeeding. For many patrons, the music may well be enough. And these shortcomings won't matter greatly. So long as they were performing songs that were fun, things were all right.

Holly's career lasted only about a year and a half. His records only made it into the "Top 100" on the charts 11 times. If that doesn't give the writers a lot of golden material to work with, they get around that problem by repeating some music ("Oh Boy," for example, is used to close both acts), and by bringing in some music that is not associated with Holly. The show uses Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," for example, in the next-to-closing spot. "Johnny B. Goode" may not be a Holly song—Holly just didn't have enough hits to fill a whole evening with well-remembered songs of his own—but it remains a killer.

Chip Deffaa
Cabaret Scenes
February 14, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.com