Honky Tonk Angles Tell Their Story in Song, American Heartland Theatre Review

Kansas City, MO - infoZine - We're not talking about Loretta Lynn, the late Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, who epitomized female country vocalists in the 1970s and recorded the Honky Tonk Angels album together in 1993, but those ladies clearly inspired creator Ted Swindley. Swindley also created Always... Patsy Cline and Tales My Grandmother Told Me, both of which have been staged at AHT, as well as other musical revues. The lights come up on an office and Angela introduces the vixen, Jessalyn Kincaid playing Sue Ellen Smith Barney Fife. Sue Ellen is working "Nine to Five" in Los Angeles for a lecherous, married man and coping with a mother who continually reminds Sue Ellen of her failures. After all, she has had two divorces and no children. Mama was proud when she was Little Miss Country Music at the age of five in Pasadena, Texas but not any more. With their characters established, the Angels move quickly, revealing their lives and personalities and flirting with the audience. Darlene's family moved from Apple Holler, West Virginia, to choppin' cotton in Mississippi and Grate, as Darlene, gives a fresh take on what Billie Joe was throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge. A year later Darlene is ready to stop dropping Choctaw Ridge flowers into the river. She’s decided to follow her dream. Angela turns her children over to Mama, Darlene turns her discouraged father over to Brother and his wife Becky, and Sue Ellen tells her mama she's sorry to have been a disappointment, but she's had it. "And I Will Always Love You," they harmonize in heavenly tones and get on buses and all headed for Music City, U.S.A. We meet them next on the last bus. There's a band on the bus! Their life as Honky Tonk Angels begins to gel. During the second act the band is still there in the Nashville honky tonk where the Angels are giving their farewell performance. It's a scene for specialty numbers, nostalgia, and good-byes. The band features Jeremy Watson (keyboards), John Wirt (guitar), Jay Miller (drums), Ry Kincaid (bass) and Russ Wever (steel guitar) under the musical direction of Anthony Edwards. The band favored us with a number not listed on the program, singing about how they like their women just a little on the trashy side. It sounded great. To borrow from the opening night review of Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892, there are many obvious improbabilities in this fable, but ... the situations are so cleverly handled as to redeem all defects. The theme is simple enough.

'HONKY TONK ANGELS' AT AMERICAN HEARTLAND THEATRE « KC Independent

MY ACHIN’ HEART: Musical uses classic country songs to tell stories of heartbreak and courage

If you want to know the heart and soul of America, listen to its songs. And few genres of song tell our stories more vividly than country music, that unique style born of folk and gospel and blues and rooted in the soil of Middle America. Love, work, family, heartache, infidelity, addiction—like it or not, this is the stuff of our lives. So when Ted Swindley —the creator of Always … Patsy Cline—

Along the way we get to know them and their tribulations, as they sing country standards like “Stand By Your Man,” “9 to 5,” “These Boots Were Made for Walking,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Harper Valley PTA” and “I Will Always Love You.” And during the course of the show, with its more than 30 peerless “girl songs,” we are reminded of how rich this body of music can be. “Part of it is realizing just how extraordinary these songs are,” says Paul Hough , AHT director of production, who will direct Angels was “realizing how daring these women were who were writing these songs,” he says. Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill,” for instance, is about sexual liberation: “There’s gonna be some changes made right here on nursery hill,” its protagonist sings, “You’ve set this chicken one last time, ’cause now I’ve got the Pill.”

At the center of Angels is the friendship of Angela ( Teri Adams ), Darlene ( Colleen Grate ) and Sue Ellen ( Jessalyn Kincaid ) that forms when they meet on the bus to Nashville. Red-headed, big-wigged Angela is a lead of sorts: She’s the oldest and has a maternal manner. “She’s just no-nonsense and tells it like it is,” says veteran local actor Teri of her character. “She’s definitely the one I would pick out to play. She is outspoken, kind of a good ole girl. She’s got six kids and lives in a double-wide trailer with her husband named Bubba.” Sue Ellen is the blonde who has lived in Los Angeles and sees herself as worldly—she is vaguely fashioned after Dolly Parton—but is really just a country girl herself. “She has new hair every time she comes onstage,” Paul says, “and that’s exactly what Dolly did: Try to find her in the same wig more than once!” Then there’s Darlene, the simple, guitar-picking girl from Apple Holler, West Virginia, a young brunette modeled somewhat after Loretta Lynn. “They all have a bit of a transformation,” says Colleen, “but I think hers is probably the greatest. She’s very plain at first: I’m not wearing makeup at all for the first act, and I’ll be kind of frumpily dressed. Then in Act 2, during the song ‘Fancy,’ I’m going to have a huge transformation.” Throughout the show, she says, “my hair keeps getting bigger and bigger.