“The Buddy Holly Story” is all about the music, which this production gets right

The Buddy Holly story probably doesn’t get told on either screen or stage were it not for the tragedy that brings it to a halt. There wasn’t much drama in the life of Charles Hardin Holley. He was just a sweet little guy from Lubbock, Texas, whose instincts were perfect for the narrow confines of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, scoring seven Top 40 singles in two years before the snowy December night when an airplane crash killed him — along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. “the Big Bopper”) — at the tender age of 22.

Ah, but the music. Limited in range as it may be (let’s just say that learning how to play “Peggy Sue” means you know like 30% of his entire oeuvre), the tuneful primitivism is infectious even now, let alone how it felt to people in a world where The Beatles had yet to exist. And a select few of his songs truly transcend their place in history.

Despite its corny humor and anemic drama, the jukebox musical that is The Buddy Holly Story works because it’s primarily about that music, finding a small but smart variety of ways to showcase not only the greatest of Holly’s hits, but breathing new life into a few of his best minor compositions. And Musical Theatre West’s production works because they’ve hired the right people for the job.

That starts, of course, with our buddy Buddy. Will Riddle not only looks the part, but has the voice, guitar chops, and stage presence as a musician to be completely believable and a pleasure to see and hear. And although his and the entire cast’s acting is adequate, because playwright Alan Janes’s hasn’t created a work of dramatic substance, acting is not what this show is about. It’s the music, dummy.

One of the delights of The Buddy Holly Story is that all the music (well, almost all) is performed live on stage by the cast. As perfect as Riddle is, bad support from any of the musicians that join him — first Omar D. Brancato (bass) and Laura Leo Kelly (drums) as his fellow Crickets, then several others as Holly’s short career progresses — would degrade the overall effect. But that never happens.

Some of the highlights are unexpected. Rendered here solo by Holly/Riddle on acoustic guitar, “Words of Love” has a luminous yearning that the original recording lacks. For the classic “Maybe Baby”, music director Ryan O’Connell gives Riddle’s Stratocaster a subtly modern treatment coming out of the amp, foreshadowing the sounds that subsequent generations of musicians were going to create by building on Holly’s rudiments. Most notably, with his arrangement of “True Love Ways”, a late Holly recording that strays further from his bread-and-butter 1-4-3 than anything else he tried, O’Connell unearths such beautifully dark atmospherics that even an out-of-tune guitar on opening night could not ruin. (Having never heard this song, at home after the show I listened to Holly’s original recording: nice, but nowhere near as good as this.)

Then there are the ones we know by heart, which you damn well better do right. “Peggy Sue”, “That’ll Be the Day”, “Peggy Sue Got Married” — all fab. But the highlight of highlights is “Everyday”. Janes’s conceit of creating the song in a single take at the end of one marathon recording session (a subtle metafictional touch, considering that all performances in a musical on a given night are single takes) is a great one, because the audience knows exactly how this quietly remarkable piece of music (the celeste!) is supposed to sound, and so we hold our breath as the band starts in. And like magic, right in front of our eyes, voilà.

The invisible challenge in staging a show where all the music is produced onstage is how to handle the spread of the physical locations of the sound sources. On this front, Musical Theatre West nets mixed results. It’s not that the sound is ever bad, but by funneling everything through the house PA, we are somewhat disabused of the illusion of seeing early rock ‘n’ roll, where a guitar at stage left came at you from the amp on that side, the bass at stage right from there, the piano from the piano, the drums from the drums (here the only instrument that we get to enjoy coming from its locus). During one number, for example, two pianos are offset a stage left and stage right — but rather than get the sonic benefit of the spatial arrangement, both come at us from the center, partly defeating the purpose of having two pianos at all. I have to imagine that the Carpenter Center PA has stereo capabilities — it’s as upscale a performance venue as we’ve got in this town — but if so, MTW has not availed themselves of this possibility.

Although mostly spot-on, O’Connell and director Keith Andrews have made a few minor miscalculations. Although Laura Leo Kelly’s drumming brings the primitivistic excitement while keeping a lid on the volume, the snare is too quiet on several songs, particularly “Not Fade Away”. And while the band’s frenetic antics on Act 1 closer “Oh, Boy!” are a treat, some of Omar D. Brancato’s acrobatics render him unable to execute his bass part in a given moment, which hurts the song’s momentum several times. 

Also, enjoyable as Marlena Madison (vocals) and Tyrone Jones (trumpet) are when they perform The Isley Brothers’ “Shout”, Andrews’s choice to hide the t band behind a giant red curtain (which increasingly highlights how little is happening onstage as the seconds turn into minutes) ultimately handicaps Madison & Jones’s efforts, because a song with such a big sound just ain’t the same when we don’t get to see its main source. I’m sure this was done because the musicians behind the curtain are ones we see in other roles — perhaps even including Riddle, who for obvious reasons we can’t see as part of the backing band at the Apollo Theatre — but this is not a good solution.

The star of the mise en scène is Paul Black, whose lighting design is quietly bold and sharply pristine, the kind of thing that many people won’t notice and yet will register in their overall experience. The goat is whoever forgot to kill a radio-station “ON AIR” sign during a joke that hinges upon the DJ talking off-air, then making a quick 180 when he rejoins his listeners.

If you’re wondering how Holly’s death is handled — and really, that’s about the only mystery when you take your seat before curtain-up — while you won’t get any spoilers here, suffice it to say that it’s the single best thing about Janes’s script, surprising, tasteful, and poignant. 

But the show doesn’t end there, because the music lives on. That’s the Buddy Holly story in a nutshell, and it’s unlikely anyone buying a ticket to The Buddy Holly Story will come away disappointed.

The Buddy Holly Story at Musical Theatre West
Times: Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 1pm; plus Thurs July 17 8pm and Sun July 20 6pm
The show runs through July 27.
Cost: starting at $20
Details: (562) 856-1999, musical.org
Venue: Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 W. Atherton, Long Beach