FFWD Weekly
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| Theatre by Lori Montgomery A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline After six years of playing Patsy Cline, jazz singer and actress Stevie Vallance says that she feels a special connection to the late country singer. Though she knows it might sound a bit strange, she says she even hears Patsy speaking to her. "I feel that there definitely is a spirit that comes to me," Vallance says earnestly. "In fact, I wasn’t going to do (the show) this time around, because I’m doing more of the jazz thing now, and I was driving down to L.A. ‘Crazy’ came on the car radio, and she just started talking to me again.... So I pulled over at the next rest stop and called (ATP artistic associate) Diane Goodman and said, ‘Forget what my agent said. It’ll work.’" The "jazz thing" includes a new CD, Practically Naked, and a touring schedule that takes her all over North America and between two homes in Vancouver and L.A. But the lure of playing the most enduring personality in country music brought her back to ATP, where she has played the part twice before. "She was quite an incredible woman, a very strong woman," Vallance says. "She’s like a shot of Vitamin B whenever I do her. She just makes me feel good inside." Vallance doesn’t get too maudlin about her eerie connection with Cline – they were even born on the same day, September 8. She jokes about the extensive padding that is necessary to lend her the same serious curves as The Great Lady of Country Music, and our interview is over when she has to leave for a "bum fitting." But she takes her responsibility seriously, as a conduit for Cline’s love of music. "I feel like her will is so strong," Vallance says. "Nothing could hold her back. She was totally open about her love of her voice and her desire to love and touch as many people as she could. It feels like even a plane crash can’t stop her. It feels like she’s just still driving through me.... "I don’t want to sound so esoteric, but I’m really starting to believe that there’s something bigger there, that finds me even in my car in the middle of a rainstorm somewhere in the middle of Oregon." The energy that infuses Vallance’s performance also affects her co-star in this show, Dave Kelly. His role, the DJ who tells Cline’s story, could be read as simply the device that brings the singer to the stage, but Kelly says he’s inspired by his co-star’s energy to create what Vallance calls a "synergy" between the two characters, who never speak directly. "It’s not so much about actors talking," he says. "It’s about her feeling the music, me feeling the music – both of us are there because we love the music. I’m giving life to that person, who loves Patsy and puts on a show about her." Kelly, who turned in a moving performance as another country superstar for ATP in Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave, admits that the role of a radio show host isn’t much of a stretch for him. Hosting A-Channel’s The Big Breakfast and Great Big Saturday Morning gives him a bit of an edge. "He’s close to me, to what I do, in my job at The Big Breakfast, pretty much," he concedes. "I stand there and I give a sense of order and through-line to all of the other things that are going on." At the same time, Kelly’s character sometimes takes on the varied roles of comics and other performers along Cline’s path to legendary fame. When it comes to those roles, if anyone besides Kelly is speaking through his performance, it’s not a late, great country singer. It might be Jebb Fink, Kelly’s The Big Breakfast co-host. Kelly notes that Fink is a stand-up comic in his "normal job," and had some tips for his acting friend. "He was reading all of my scripts and giving me all of these insights as the comic, as to how a comic would do those kinds of characters," Kelly explains. "He’s seen every movie on comics, everything that’s ever been done, and he’s like a doctor who watches ER, and says, ‘They’re pretty close, except....’" Kelly has endured what he calls an "absurd" schedule of pre-taping recently to allow for this return to the stage. He says he’d be open to other theatre work, but his television commitments come first. "If acting things can come up and work into it, that’s great. This will be the experiment to see whether I can pull off both at the same time." |
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