Holly’s music still great

BAILA LAZARUS

I’ve always loved the quote by Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.”

Luckily for rock ’n’ roll, Buddy Holly had both talent and persistence. As we pick up his career at the beginning of the Arts Club production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, Holly (Zachary Stevenson) is playing a live-to-air show on KDAV’s Sunday Party in the mid-1950s. It’s the first all-country station in the United States and DJ Hipockets Duncan (played by Michael Scholar Jr.) gives local musicians, including Holly, a chance to perform new music. But Holly is not interested in performing country and, much to the DJ’s chagrin, plays his own brand of “new” music – rock ’n’ roll.

When Holly rocks out, he gets kicked out and bounces around until he finds a producer who allows him to do his music his way. So begins his career in earnest at Dekka Records with Norman and Vi Petty, who recognize talent and a hot sound. Norman Petty would later get co-writer credits on several Holly hits, including “Peggy Sue,” “Not Fade Away,” “Think it Over” and “Rave On!”

Once this moment is reached in the play, it basically becomes an arena for Holly’s music, with little (very little) backstory and acting thrown in.

Among the few interesting tidbits we find out: the origin of the name in the eponymous hit “Betty Sue,” why Holly wore such heavy glasses and what happened the night the band made history as the first white group to play New York’s famed Apollo Theatre.

To be truthful, Stevenson could easily hold the show just performing hit after hit of Holly’s work. He has an amazing likeness, both in sound and appearance, and, being a musician in real life, he has the talent to pull it off.

It’s actually the in-between-songs bits that seem awkward and often slow the performance down. The acting is OK, but not stellar. Indeed, none of the parts really offers anyone an opportunity to shine as an actor. In fact, there’s almost no dramatic tension in the show, which is why I often lost interest when Stevenson wasn’t singing. Aside from minor run-ins Holly has with unyielding producers, and disagreements in the band that cause the Crickets and Holly to go their separate ways, the whole play seems to come off as a Coles Notes version of the last few years of Holly’s life.

Even Elena Juatco, who was nominated for an Ovation Award for her performance as Christine Colgate in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, seems to get lost in the play as Holly’s wife, Maria Elena. Her accent only seems to visit the land of Spanish rather than making a permanent home there, and she sounds at times Chinese, Scandinavian or even from the West Indies.

In the final 20 minutes of the play, the musical numbers expand to include the last show Holly played – the Surf Ballroom’s Winter Dance Party in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1959. Besides Holly (now back together with his Crickets), it included JP Richardson (aka the Big Bopper) singing “Chantilly Lace”; Ritchie Valens (also played by Scholar) singing “La Bamba”; and Dion and the Belmonts.

This is the night Holly chooses to fly home rather than take the bus, despite nightmares his wife has had about him dying in an accident in the sky. In a horrible irony, Valens “wins” a coin toss that gets him onto the same plane that would take both their lives.

There’s nothing that really shines in this play other than Holly’s music, but in those moments when I allowed myself to imagine I was at an original performance watching Holly himself, I could understand what a deep loss it was that this artist was snuffed out so early in a transformative career.

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story runs at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage until July 11. For information, visit artsclub.com.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, painter and photographer. Her work can be seen at orchiddesigns.net.

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