Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story opened at the Stanley Theatre last week, and is the Arts Club’s annual summer musical. The last few years have seen this slot go to a slew of big-budget crowd pleasers, such as Les Miserables, The Producers, and Cabaret.

With Buddy, a less familiar production, the Arts Club has diverged from this formula.

As you might have guessed from the title, the music is an assortment of the rock n’ roll pioneer’s most famous songs. The songs themselves are the major players in this musical, with the characters mostly there to shepherd the plot from crowd-pleasing song to crowd-pleasing song. The common term for this sort of show is a “Jukebox Musical”, and while they’ve become more and more popular on Broadway (Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys, and American Idiot are three examples), their artistic possibilities tend to be somewhat limited.

In any event, the show traces the final three years of Buddy Holly’s life, from his rise from a country singer in Texas to the forefather of rock n’ roll. By the age of 21, he had already given the world “That’ll Be the Day,” “Oh Boy!”, and “Everyday!”. By the age of 22, he was dead, killed when his plane went down in an Iowa cornfield in 1959.

Zachary Stevenson had already played Holly in four different productions of the musical, and it shows: his portrayal of the title character is consistently entertaining, as he dances, struts and pulls off a very convincing Texan twang the entire show. He and the Crickets, played by Jeff Bryant, Scott Carmichael and Jeremy Holmes, are surprisingly adept musically; they all play their instruments on-stage and if nothing else, you will come away thinking they could make an impressive cover band.

The plot itself quickly races from point to point, studio to studio, and concert hall to concert hall as Holly proves to folks in Texas who shoehorned him as a country singer that he can play that newfangled music the kids called “Rock n’ Roll”.

The second act sees Holly find a wife and ditch the Crickets, before moving on to the final concert he ever played, the “Winter Dance Party” at a non-descript ballroom in the middle of Iowa. Holly, Richie Valens (of “La Bamba” fame), and Jiles “the Big Bopper” Richardson sing a variety of 50′s standards for the crowd, in what is essentially a 40-minute nostalgic concert unto itself. Buddy relies heavily on audience participation throughout, and it’s an amusing sight to see hundreds staid middle-age Vancouverites implored to dance in the aisles. Sadly, only a dozen or so accepted the offer.

Is Buddy worth checking out? The songs aren’t new and the plot offers no surprises (assuming you know what Don Maclean is singing about in “American Pie”), which means the sense of exhilaration and wonderment one hopes for in a musical is largely lacking. It’s a solidly constructed show, and the sets do a very good job of evoking the 1950′s, but your enjoyment of the musical will mostly depend on how much you enjoy Buddy Holly tunes.

And with prices beginning at $25, students might be better served by enjoying “Peggy Sue” over an iPod.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...