Not fading away - Marriott’s revival of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story soars
Alan Janes’s musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story is a clever piece of work, mixing the best elements of a biographical play, a jukebox musical, and a cover band concert into a bubbly, tightly written confection that reveals in 100 minutes why Buddy Holly was great and loved as a songwriter and performer and why Don McLean would call February 3, 1959—the day he was killed in a plane crash—“the day the music died.” The show features many of Holly’s best-known hits: “That’ll Be the Day,” “Fade Away,” “Peggy Sue,” plus other hits of the era—most notably “Chantilly Lace” and “La Bamba,” songs associated with the two other musicians who died with Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. Between the songs, Janes gives us short dramatic scenes charting Holly’s growth as an artist and rock star.
Personally, I found the sections of the show that portray Holly and company in the studio composing Holly’s hits the most fascinating. They are probably also the most fictionalized, since the creation of songs in the studio is notoriously slow, painstaking, and, to those not in on the creative process, tedious. (See Jean-Luc Godard’s documentary, One Plus One, about the Rolling Stones’s recording of “Sympathy for the Devil.”)
Thanks in large part to Holly’s music, this is one of those shows that rarely crashes and burns, even when it is in the hands of awkward performers. And when it is being revived by a company that has got what it takes and knows how to use it, the show flies high.
Such is the case with the Marriott production. Not a moment of stage time is wasted; every performer is on point, every performance pitch-perfect. Director and choreographer Amber Mak uses Marriott’s challenging in-the-round stage well, taking care to choreograph scenes so the actors are constantly moving; no audience member ever has to look at the back of the actors for very long. Jeff Kmiec’s simple set design, which transforms the performing area so it looks simultaneously like a linoleum-tiled room and a huge, multicolored vinyl-disc—facilitates the actors’ many graceful stage moments.
Taking the lead, Kieran McCabe makes a very compelling Holly, winning us with his acting and wowing us with his guitar playing. McCabe is not alone. The actors playing Holly’s band, the Crickets, (Jed Feder, Shaun Whitley, and Michael Kurowski) also play instruments, as do most of the other actors. This adds another layer of realism to the performances and most likely accounts for the show’s live concert-level energy. You would think a show that begins by revealing how Holly dies and wraps up with a recreation of Holly’s final concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, would end on a downer. But the material here is so strong, and Marriott’s performances so well executed, Holly’s hard-rocking tunes linger long after the lights come up, and we have to go home.
