CRAZY FOR PATSY

A warm-hearted tribute lets Patsy
Cline’s music do most of the talking

Molly Hernández, Liz Chidester

American Blues Theater closes out its 40th season with a rather left-field choice: the 1988 revue Always…Patsy Cline, created by Ted Swindley. Covering the career of country music legend—scratch that—music legend Patsy Cline, this is an odd but crowd-pleasing bio-musical, with just two actors and a terrific quintet of musicians under the musical direction of Michael Mahler, with orchestrations by August Eriksmoen and Tony Migliore.

Liz Chidester

Scenic designer Tara A. Houston has fashioned an Opry-esque set that covers most of the stage. Two small areas serve as a breakfast nook in a Texan home at one end of the stage and concert seating at the other. The band, splendidly decked out in black with cowboy hats and boots, walks onstage and takes its places. The lights dim, and Patsy Cline (Liz Chidester) takes the mic to belt out “Honky Tonk Merry Go Round” to her adoring audience.

Molly Hernández, Liz Chidester

Directed by Harmony France, the show uses a framing device drawn from the correspondence between Cline and Louise Seger. Played here by Molly Hernández, Louise is a young divorcée raising two children on her own in Houston. She is also a huge Patsy Cline fan and, when she hears that Cline will be performing in her town, gets to the venue early and introduces herself, bringing the full force of her personality to bear on the encounter. Cline is charmed by Louise and winds up spending the night at her house, sparking a friendship that would continue via letters and phone calls until Cline’s untimely death a couple of years later.

Liz Chidester

Unusually for bio-plays—or biopics—Always…Patsy Cline doesn’t give us anything directly from Cline. All the information we glean about her comes from Louise. This places enormous weight on the actor playing the part, but fortunately for this production, Molly Hernández is more than equal to the task. Her Louise is an irrepressible bundle of good-natured energy, and she takes control of the production from the moment she steps onto the stage. She narrates, prances across the stage, sings, and banters with the audience, improvising beautifully in character. She also has wonderful chemistry with Chidester; the two actors effortlessly convey the sort of friendship that develops when two kindred souls meet.

Liz Chidester

As Cline, Liz Chidester has an even more difficult assignment. Aside from the vocal demands of the role—I would estimate she’s singing for nearly three-quarters of the show’s running time—she must also convey the complexities of a legendary performer largely through song. There is very little that Patsy Cline says onstage that isn’t directly connected to a performance. A few songs are woven into the frame story, but for the most part Patsy stands behind a microphone and sings. This leaves Chidester to find other ways to communicate Cline’s isolation and loneliness, and she is fantastic. The way she slumps back while seated on her suitcase during “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” before a concert, or the weariness with which she ashes her cigarette at Louise’s kitchen table during “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray,” says more about the character than pages of dialogue ever could. And when she digs deeper in a stunning performance of “Crazy”—written by a little-known songwriter named Willie Nelson; you may have heard of him since—it’s an absolute showstopper. Chidester never attempts an imitation of Cline—much to my relief—but instead offers an interpretation. The singing is flawless. This is a star turn if there ever was one.

Molly Hernández, Liz Chidester

Patsy Cline’s influence on American music is so enormous that it’s startling to realize how small her discography actually is. She recorded only three short albums and a handful of additional songs before her death in a plane crash at age 30. The event is memorialized onstage with sensitivity through a gorgeous lighting effect. Michael Trudeau‘s lighting design is remarkable, shifting and morphing with the mood of the songs. I was also impressed by the sound design from Stefanie M. Senior and Maggie Bantner, particularly the recalibration as Chidester moves toward and away from the stage microphone throughout the show. The transitions are seamless.

Liz Chidester

The production also functions as a love letter to a long-gone era, when a chart-topping star could walk into an arena alone and a fan could approach and strike up a conversation. Could you imagine an encounter like that happening today? If the bodyguards don’t get you, the entourage will. As ghoulish as it sounds, Cline’s early death had the effect of preserving her in amber. We never saw her grow old or her life invaded by increasingly intrusive media and fandom. She gave us a few dozen songs and then was gone. Her legacy remains her music, untainted by the ugliness that sometimes accompanies fame. Eschewing the voyeurism of most bioplays and biopics, the show keeps its focus on the music and the relationship between two women—a chance encounter between a star and a fan that blossomed into genuine friendship.

Always…Patsy Cline may come across as old-fashioned, but in choosing to leave its star with her privacy unviolated and her mystique intact, it is more radical than it first appears.

Molly Hernández, Liz Chidester

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photos by Michael Brosilow

Always…Patsy Cline
American Blues Theater
5627 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago
ends on June 21, 2026
for tickets ($34.50–$64.50), call 773.654.3103
or visit American Blues Theater

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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