'09-'10 Miami hockey season photos
COSI on Wheels
Arrest made in SWAT standoff
Home > Blogs > Things to do in Butler County > Archives > 2009 > June > 16 > Entry
Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre revives ‘Always…. Patsy Cline,’ June 26-28
Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre presents “Always … Patsy Cline” by Ted Swindley, 8 p.m. June 26-27 and 2 p.m. June 28, Garfield Junior High School, 250 N. Fair St., Hamilton. $20 advance, $22 at the door. (513) 737-7529.
As soon as Julie Joyce Smith stepped off the stage from the title role in “Always… Patsy Cline” for Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre in 2001, she was ready to do it again.
And in honor of GHCT’s 50th anniversary season, the group is producing it again with three performances the last weekend of June.
“I had no idea it would be so well-received,” she said. “Word of mouth really got out on this one, and by the end of the run, they were selling seats in the orchestra pit — although they didn’t bother to tell us until we walked out on the stage.”
There are several reasons that it proved so popular, said Smith and her co-star, Joan Kirsch, who plays Louise Segar, a fan who befriended Cline in a Texas honky-tonk in 1961 and corresponded with her until the singer’s tragic death in a plane crash in 1963.
“It’s a real show about real people,” Kirsch said. “And I’m not a big country music fan, but her music is something I like to listen to. She sang the same kinds of songs as Rosemary Clooney, Brenda Lee and Connie Francis. She would say that she had no range, but she had an extreme range.”
“When I was growing up, my dad had a record collection that was full of the Ink Spots and Nat ‘King’ Cole, but he also had Patsy Cline, so I didn’t really think of it as country music when I was growing up,” Smith added.”
“She was easy on the ears and there was nothing trite about it,” Kirsch said. “If she didn’t feel it, she didn’t sing it, and that’s the way she was with her friendships.
Although the show features 27 of Cline’s songs — including the its “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Sweet Dreams” and “Walking After Midnight,” the story of the friendship between the two women make it more than a musical revue.
“Patsy’s music made her feel good,” Kirsch said of Louise. “When she hears her sing for the first time, she says, ‘That’s the way I always wanted to sing.’ So when she goes to see her in a club, she just walks right up and says ‘Hi.’
“She was a relative unknown at the time and having fan meant a lot to her,” Kirsch said.
Louise was a single mother, divorced from an abusive marriage. And although Cline was still married, she may have seen a lot of herself in Louise and her situation. On one of her last recorded songs, “Faded Love,” Smith notes that you can Cline’s voice choking with tears, perhaps because she was thinking of her own troubled marriage.
The two wrote letters to each other for two years — with Cline signing each letter with the show’s title — until Cline’s death.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre, Theater
Comments
By Ken Smith
June 19, 2009 9:43 AM | Link to this
This show has wide appeal for folks who may not normally go to theater, but love this music. Proceeds benefit the GHCT Renew-the-Palace-Theater effort.
By Ken Smith
June 19, 2009 9:44 AM | Link to this
This show has wide appeal for folks who may not normally go to theater, but love this music. Proceeds benefit the GHCT Renew-the-Palace-Theater effort.
By buysomaonline
July 11, 2009 1:47 AM | Link to this
the best place to buy soma online
By Jay Shaft
August 5, 2009 7:38 AM | Link to this
Hey nice register …. Keep up the inordinate in the planning stages unemployed