The Buddy Holly Stage Show
From letter to Billy – April, 2012
Well … all right! Clearly here, oh boy, I could rave on but it’s long gone early in the morning and I’d need more time to think it over although every day I’ve recalled that it’s so easy to be critical – in a heartbeat – but I hope this letter reveals some words of love. I know the memories will not fade away; anyway, maybe baby, it doesn’t matter anymore. Um, oh yeh …
I do wish they’d included Brown Eyed Handsome Man in the recent Buddy Holly stage show in our big performing arts centre at Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington.
It was a full house of 800, always a good feeling, even though we were surrounded by numerous grey heads, overweights and other hobbly ancients. I couldn’t help thinking that they used to rock’n’roll with the best of them probably to the great music we were about to enjoy.
I was full of expectations not only for a great rendering of the songs but also for a well-written drama weaving in the songs as in a tapestry. In the former I was not disappointed – Glen Joseph, the singer/actor/musician playing Buddy was from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the only Brit. in the show, the rest of the cast and band and support musicians were all hired in New Zealand for the tour. In the latter, the drama, this was definitely not written by a David Hare, a Stoppard or a Pinter.
It was all about the music, of course. When you have songs like Buddy Holly’s anthems to the romances and heartbreaks of youth, the fabric in which they’re placed matters little. However, I still wanted to see some factual drama, the playing out of the brief 22-year life of Buddy Holly and some deft introducing of his songs. The dramatist had chosen, probably quite rightly in the simplicity of things, to devote the whole of the first part (about an hour and 10 minutes) to Buddy’s short life, played out in chronological fashion. I would never have written it that way, choosing to have been more serious, trying to make a point or show something weird or wonderful about Holly’s character or relations with people, or placing him in the history of Rock’n’Roll. Of course, that kind of style, my kind of writing, too, would probably never have resulted in a show of 26 years on stage touring the world, seen by more than 22 million people.
There was one terrific aspect of the production which made up for quite a number of my dashed expectations, which I’ll get out of the way first: especially the not-serious-enough telling of life and times, actually it was goofy spoofy stuff. As I’ve said earlier, I wanted the drama to link and highlight the songs, weaving them in more cleverly. The writer had chosen to play it too much for laughs, making Buddy and the Crickets look a bit daft at times, causing me to doubt the veracity of their behaviour. There were also faults in the dramatics, with languorous patches where the actors didn’t come in on cue or they let the pace fall away, perhaps just poor acting The actor playing Don Stroud fluffed his lines a couple of times (still, it must be tough on the road, although playing to full houses).
There was one terrific thing though, one grand aspect that was a stroke of genius by the writer: Buddy Holly’s final show of his life was re-enacted. So for the last 40 mins we were able to rock, really rock, without the daft dialogue, song after song, reaching a crescendo with “Oh Boy” and then an encore of “Rave On”. Then “Buddy” shouted out at the curtain call, “Hey, Kapiti Coast, you really rock!” The next night, he would have said similar to a Wellington audience.