Always...Patsy Cline

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Sandi Lee Is Superb...Go See And Hear Her!
By Twila Crawford

Howdy! From that first greeting to the theater audience, Sandi Lee is Patsy Cline in voice, dark-haired good looks and cowgirl outfit. And the audience greets her throughout the performance with singin´ along, dancin´, standin´ up with rousin´ clappin´ and departin´ Santa Barbara Theater Tuesday night (show is at 8:00 p.m.) with enthusiasm about Patsy Cline...and Sandi Lee.

This is Sandi´s first major solo performance here
- we definitely need to see and hear her more around Puerto Vallarta. This is not her first time being Patsy Cline. Sandi performed as Patsy Cline in Love Always, Patsy Cline, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she lived for eight years. Sandi moved from pop opera to learning a different type of music and a way of speaking with a Virginia drawl. After opening night in Riyadh, an elderly couple from Winchester, VA, Patsy Cline´s hometown, told Sandi they knew Patsy Cline. ¨Äfter all these years, our Patsy is back.

¨ The two-women show with Sandi and veteran Vallata performer Mikki Prost combines humor, sadness and reality, and is based on Patsy Cline´s friendship with Houston housewife Louise Seger. Mikki Prost as Louise is quite the contrast to dark-haired, well-dressed and lovely Patsy Cline with Louise´s sorta blond hair, blue jeans and boots, and rough-edged, Texas country-girl look and demeanor...with, oh my, that accent we´ll have ringing in our ears when we try to sleep. Despite those contrasts, upon meeting, they became great friends and pen-pals. They had love of Schlitz beer (remember?) and as Louise says, ¨shared about children, husbands, and loves lost and found.¨ Patsy impressed Louise with willingly frying eggs and simply being down-home. Patsy describes herself as an ¨ol´ country girl who doesn´t read music or know what key I´m in.¨ Louise says, ¨Patsy was just as much as (like) us.¨

Patsy´s songs are what we came for, and Sandi Lee fulfills our expectations, and then some. She opens in a black-and-white cowgirl outfit with I´m a Honky-Tonk Merry-Go-Round and moves through country as well as pop songs such as The Wayward Wind and even Shake, Rattle and Roll. So many songs we had forgotten about since our Dad listened to the radio to the Grand Ole Opry while working on wood projects in the evening in his garage. How about ´em (we´ll all be talkin´ this way): I´m Back in Baby´s Arms, Anytime You´re Feelin´Blue, Walkin´After Midnight, I Fall to Pieces, Your Cheatin´ Heart, Stop Pickin´ On Me, You Belong to Me, Got a Feelin´ Called the Blues, Sweet Dreams of You, I´ve Got Your Picture - She´s Got You (both previous songs bring back high school memories for us - the class ring, the high school yearbook...), Two Cigarettes in an Ash Tray, Crazy, Seven Lonely Days, If I Could See the World Through the Eyes of a Child - What a Wonderful World This Could Be (Patsy sang this at bedtme one time to Louise´s young son), Blue Moon of Kentucky, and South of the Border. Sandi´s voice is most pleasing in the lower registers.

We see Patsy in many beautiful outfits, 60¨s-style. Sandi, with Patsy´s dark hair, wears many colors well. And, oh those high heels. The setting is simple, primarily in Louise´s kitchen. Over in a bar, we see posters back to the 60´s of a red and white Chevrolet, a movie poster with Marilyn Monroe and others, and a poster of the benefit at Memorial Auditorium in Kansas City, Kansas, where Patsy performed for the last time before she died at age 30 in a private plane crash in a thunderstorm on March 5, 1963, along with her manager and two other performers. (Take a look at the poster on stage for more details about performers in the final show. You´ll recognize names.) During her short life, she recorded 108 songs.

Behind the scenes of the show, Don MacLachlan handled sound, Bill Deavenport supervised lighting, and Roberta Valdez was responsible for costumes.
We know you´ll love Sandi Lee´s singing, and you´ll laugh, we think, too, with Mikki Prost who is in the same blue jeans to the finale. Mikki, as so many of us previously have seen, knows how to play an audience...especially the men.

Mikki´s acting is strong as Louise remembers Patsy. True Love is sung after Patsy Cline´s death in the plane crash. The audience insisted on several encore songs that Sandi Lee requested be kept as a surprise for new audiences. Just go...and laugh, cry and sing along with Patsy Cline.