Pennington's Buddy Holly Story impresses at the Cameo

Let me start off running. All the actors on stage played their own instruments, and they were really good musicians and actors, which gave great credibility and realism to the performances. Not only was the Buddy Holly band, The Crickets superb, with special mention of bassist Tony Gloria, and Apollo Sax Player Billy Ray Sheppard, but also the back up singers looked good, performed well and were well-choreographed in their dance moves. Stewart Mann who played Buddy Holly was perfectly Holly - where do these incredible talents come from? Thad Payne did a good Big Bopper and Ernest Sauceda did a fine Richie Valens. Other actors were supportive and did their parts well. Sounds like a good show -does it not? And it is!

Now to the nitty gritty. The set design had good points and some clever elements - such as the giant size juke box selection lists, but felt a little incomplete. A lot of musical equipment needed to be moved quickly around the stage, and it was handled very well during well-planned transitions. The costumes were good and well-conceived. The sound was excellent - amazing, because of the many performers being accompanied by the live rock music. That really made me happy. I don't like going to a performance and listening to garbled or overly-loud sound. The three projection screens were helpful in guiding the audience to the historical events happening on stage. In some places the video was very creative and professionally-done, made to look vintage. In one place they overused a snowfall graphic video, but that was the only let down. The lighting did not have much finesse, with people on the edges of the stage sometimes standing in the dark.

During the First Act, you discover the early years of Buddy Holly and what made Buddy who he was. In with all the great live music performances of Holly's early songs was one weak sequence of recorded Holly songs, where the stage went dark as the performers turned their back to the audience. All in my party felt that it was a low energy spot in the show. Someone actually felt that it was a lighting glitch at first. We felt that the performers should have performed those songs. I don't know why they didn't. Was it the writing of the show or a local directorial decision?

Act Two was a home run - it was longer than Act One and great fun from start to finish with wonderful performances by the 16 musicians and singers on stage. You have to experience Act Two - it contains the last live performance of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens - and you feel like you are really there - the excitement just ripples through the audience. I want to go back and see the show at least one more time for the euphoria of reliving that rock concert.

Buddy Holly did not have the sloppy looseness and obvious karaoke tracks of some recent musical shows in town, and for that I am truly grateful. Local theater production companies don't have the gigantic budgets of Broadway road shows at the Majestic, and that has to be understood by the local audiences. But a small budget does not have to translate into a cheap-looking, poor sounding, sloppy show. If Jonathan Pennington keeps doing exciting productions like Buddy, and even tweeks some weak spots in his shows before they open, then Pennington Productions at their new home in the Cameo Theatre could be one of the premier places to have fun in San Antonio theater. Go see Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.   www.cameocenter.com