Dollywood In Bad Decline Tribute to Patsy Cline has everything but the truth. by CHRIS DAVIS nd the Indian took me out into the desert, where we got drunk on homemade beer and dreamed off the radio. My spirit guide, the girl and somewhat larger Indian, came to me in the sky and called out with the voice of James Earl Jones. "Chris," she said, "you cannot curse the ocean for getting in your way, nor shall you condemn the gerbil for being a very small rodent. You can not fault the musical review for being but a shallow entertainment, and you must never blame Patsy Cline for the crap that passes for good country music these days. You are the Possum King, you can do anything!" Is everybody in? The country honey depicted in Playhouse on the Square's musical biography A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline needs little in the way of formal introductions. Metal-head, Parrot-Head, Dead-head, or punk, chances are pretty good that, no matter what you usually listen to on the radio, at some point you have stumbled through the doors of perception into a smoky after-hours kinda joint where you didn't know anybody, so -- like a dumbass -- you went ahead and played "Crazy" on the jukebox 16 or 18 times and cried out loud and sang along. Maybe that was just me, but even in her day, Cline was a genre buster. When "Walking After Midnight" went soaring across both the pop and country music charts, it was obvious that the industry had a phenomenon on their hands. Though Mama Maybelle Carter was already on her way to becoming a legend and a handful of ladies had scored hit songs, until Patsy Cline came along there was really only one female star in the male-dominated world of country music. Kitty Wells sang about hardship and the cheating life, but underneath it all, she was every bit a lady and a model woman of the day, who would just as soon stay home and cook her husband dinner as to get out on the road and sing. "The Cline," as Patsy referred to herself, was another matter. She was a full-figured gal, who, according to lore, could cuss like a cowboy, love like a monkey, and kick like a mule. Her second husband Charlie Dick (Patsy called him Mr. Cline) said, "She had balls," and biographer Ellis Nassour records her postcoital query, "Now hoss, wasn't that the best fuck you ever had?" She was Mae West bawdy and bigger than life, but when she sang Amazing Grace, there could be no denying the possibility of a honky-tonk heaven. Cline's short life was full of delicious contradictions and landmark achievements. After viewing A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline, the unlikely neophyte knows only three things: that the singer loved her mama, trusted God, and sang some of the best country-tinged torch songs in the universe. On preview night, the audience at Playhouse was absolutely swept away, from the moment the first ghostly glow lit the stage and Renee Kemper (Cline) launched headlong into "Sweet Dreams" until the last lights faded away into darkness. When Kemper isn't singing, she all but vanishes -- but who cares? When she is singing, well -- um -- wow. In full bloom, her voice is much bigger than Cline's ever was, though not nearly as vulnerable. She roundly fails to get anywhere close to the heart of the historic character, but as I stated before, when she is singing those wonderful songs with her wonderful voice, who the hell cares what Patsy Cline was really like? In the context of the weak script, Kemper is true to every action and accomplishes her tasks with spunk to spare. The secret star of this show is the increasingly superb Michael Dugan. Whether portraying a hayseed clown a la Archie Campbell, a wisecracking Vegas lounge comedian, or the plain-talking deejay Little Bigman, Dugan is the master of every moment and absolutely alive in every scene. He will make you howl at jokes in the theatre that will make you kick yourself all the way home. Backing the replicated Cline, the replicated Jordanaires keep things buzzing along with perfect harmony and bouncy renditions of classic radio jingles. Patsy Cline's actual piano player, the undersung Floyd Kramer, was a honky-tonk Satie. His minimal arrangements and gentle plinking trills are as inimitable as the just-whomped-in-the-face-with-an-iron expression Kramer sported on countless late-night commercials hawking his greatest hits. On the ivories, Ernie Scarborough makes it all look easy. The costumes were a little off. Cline (whose mother was a seamstress) was fussy about her appearance and had a thing for tight sweaters, push-up bras, and knee-length cutesie-pie skirts. Kemper is small, fine-featured, and not nearly as voluptuous as the real Cline. Her outfits were all mid-calf or longer, and they all looked about two sizes too big. I probably would never have mentioned this, however, had an audience member not commented, "It looks like she is wearing a potato sack."