UTAH SHAKESPEAREAN FESTIVAL, fall season, "Always . . . Patsy Cline" and "Driving Miss Daisy," playing in repertory, Wednesdays-Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. through Oct. 14 in the Randall Jones Theatre, Cedar City. "Patsy Cline," matinees Sept. 20-23 and Oct. 4-7 and evenings Sept. 27-30 and Oct. 11-14. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (one intermission). "Daisy" matinees Sept. 27-30 and Oct. 11-14 and evenings Sept. 20-23 and Oct. 4-7. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes (no intermission). All seats are reserved. Tickets range from $16 to $30, depending on seat location. Some student and group discounts. For reservations, call 435-586-7878 or 800-752-9849 or visit the festival's Web site at www.bard.org.
CEDAR CITY — The Utah Shakespearean Festival is closing its 39th season with two contrasting plays about friendship.
One, Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Driving Miss Daisy," is a beautifully crafted and poignant work spanning 25 years in the unusual relationship between a stubborn, feisty, 72-year-old Atlanta widow, Daisy Worthen, and Hoke Coleburn, the black driver hired by her son after she crashes her car.
The other, Ted Swindley's "Always . . . Patsy Cline," is a musical revue based on the brief friendship that developed between the country singer and one of her staunchest fans.
DRIVING MISS DAISY, directed by J. R. Sullivan, has a small cast — just three actors. But the drama touches on some big issues. Racial and religious prejudice. Aging. Parent-child relationships.
Patricia Fraser (seen in Utah in such recent productions as Pioneer Theatre Company's "The Cripple of Inishmaan" and USF's "Relative Values") plays Daisy, with festival newcomers Ernest Perry Jr. as Hoke and Ned Schmidtke as Boolie Worthen, Daisy's son.
They deliver stunning performances that were accorded — and rightfully so — a standing ovation on opening weekend.
Christopher Pickart's scenery is relatively simple — four large windows, all different, signifying various settings for the vignettes as they segue smoothly from one to another — Daisy's home, Boolie's office, a church. The passage of time flows seamlessly, starting with Daisy lamenting that her fairly new Oldsmobile was entirely at fault for her accident. Her trusty old La Salle would never have gotten itself into reverse, damaging a neighbor's garage and tool shed.
Her driving privileges taken away, Daisy is forced — reluctantly — to be driven around Atlanta by Hoke Coleburn. Daisy's aghast. She'd sooner take the trolley to Piggly Wiggly than have her friends see her being chauffeured around.
But, during the next 25 years, Daisy and Hoke become dear friends.
Together, they weather not only the turmoil of the Martin Luther King movement and the bombing of a Jewish synagogue, but a somewhat haphazard trip to Uncle Walter's 90th birthday in Mobile (Daisy may have been a swell fifth-grade teacher, but she doesn't fare well at map reading).
As Daisy ages into her 90s, little props and sounds suggest what time period it is. Her old dial phone gives way to a newfangled Touch-Tone. Her Oldsmobile is traded in for a newer model . . . with air-conditioning. When the power goes out, Hoke fetches hot coffee from a new chain of corner stores called 7-Eleven.
This compassionate drama is rarely staged. It's hard to do, unless a director is blessed with just the right combination of performers. Sullivan has them in Fraser, Perry and Schmidtke.
If you have to, hire a chauffeur to drive to you Cedar City to enjoy this loving, humorous, richly textured drama.
ALWAYS . . . PATSY CLINE, directed by Jonathan Gillard Daly, takes two dozen of the late country/pop singer's hits and drops them into an entertaining musical revue, telling Cline's story through one of her biggest fans — Louise Seger of Houston.
Daly previously directed both USF performers — Kitty Balay (Cline) and longtime festival favorite Leslie Brott (Seger) — in a production of the same show in 1997 at the PCPA Theaterfest in Solvang, Calif.
On the Randall Jones Theatre stage, replicating a Grand Ole Opry appearance and other highlights in Cline's brief rise to stardom, they team up for an energetic production that is solidly entertaining.
The audience, literally, is dancing in the aisles by the time Patsy gets to "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (although it takes some arm-twisting by Louise, who spends quite a bit of her time working the crowd).
"Always . . . Patsy Cline" is Louise's story nearly as much as it is Patsy's.
Seger narrates the two-hour show, explaining how she first heard Cline's music on Houston radio station KIKK, then nearly drove disc jockey Hal Harris nuts by calling in requests several times a day. One of the best segments is when Seger, learning that Patsy would be making a personal appearance at the Esquire Ballroom — a cavernous building near Houston — rounds up all of her friends and co-workers to attend.
Seger is gussied up "like Grace Kelly at a dude ranch" and finally gets to meet Cline in person. This was in May 1961, and the two began a pen-pal friendship that continued up until the very day Cline died in an airplane crash.
Cline loved to perform in front of a live audience, and guest Equity artist Balay brings this charm and energy to the festival's tune-filled revue.
There are two dozen specific songs listed as part of the program, including two encores ("If You've Got Leavin' on Your Mind" and "Bill Bailey"), but Brott noted last weekend, following a performance, that the musicians have a few other Cline oldies ready just in case there are requests from the audience.
Cline and Seger's friendship, which really began in the kitchen of Seger's home while stirring up a post-show meal of bacon and eggs after the Esquire Ballroom gig, is the heart and soul of this show. Still a major hit in cabarets and theaters across the country, it's about two women — one a superstar, the other a 9-to-5- worker, but both of them mothers — who were always there for each other, even if only in the dozens of letters they wrote back and fourth.
Backing up the two performers on stage are five talented musicians: Roger Rettig on steel guitar (the London native, who now lives in the United States, is called London Slider in the show — and he's been in several productions of the show elsewhere); longtime festival musical director/conductor Brian William Baker as pianist/conductor of the Bodacious Bobcats; guitarist Barry Brooksby; bassist Mark S. Drandsen; and percussionist Darin Wadley.
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com