Mankato musician artist Hannah Cesario always had a few Patsy Cline standards in her repertoire.
But by March 7, she’s going to have a whole more. Cesario will portray the legendary country singer in “A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline,” a dinner theater production that will take the audience through both Cline’s life and music.
Cesario says she’s excited for the chance to perform as Cline and for folks to learn more about the woman who made so many songs famous.
“Honestly, I didn’t know much about Patsy Cline,” she says. “Songs like ‘Walkin’ after Midnight’ and ‘Crazy’ have always been part of my repertoire, but I never really dove into the Patsy Cline catalog, and I don’t know why. But then when I got the proposal to play the part and I listened to the songs, I was like, ‘Oh, this will be fun.’ Nice little challenge for me because I’ve never really sang country before.”
“A Close Walk” is scheduled for March 7-9 and 14-16 at the Kato Ballroom. Mankato musician Ryan Rader is the show’s musical director. The show also features comedy by Branson, Missouri, comedian Brent Aithison.
The heart and soul of the show, though, is the legend and perfect-pitch vocal stylings of Patsy Cline. For the past few months Cesario’s been researching Cline’s life to get a feel for the woman behind one of America’s most famous voices.
“I read the Loretta Lynn book about her and Patsy and their friendship. And that was kind of fun to dive into,” she says. “I also listened to an audio book about Patsy, a biography. And my brother now lives in Tennessee, and I went down and visited him and went to Nashville for a day and went to the Patsy Cline Museum.”
In the research, one thing that surprised Cesario about Cline was the fact that Cline wasn’t necessarily thrilled with singing her more popular songs. Among those was perhaps her most well-known song, “Crazy.”
The song was written by Willie Nelson, and she didn’t like the way he sang it on the original demo. But as Cline did with many songs, she used her voice to elevate something from good to great.
“She didn’t write any of her own music,” Cesario says. “So a lot of those songs that were given to her, she really created her own melody and put her own spin on it, which I thought was cool.”
The show’s producers are Tim Hendricks, a graduate of Minnesota State University’s theater program, and Tim Berry, longtime Mankato impresario. Hendricks has been doing theater for 30 years professionally. He played Scarecrow from “The Wizard of Oz” for the last 17 years at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids. For the past six years he’s performed with Homeward Bound Theater’s “Cat in the Hat” and “Storytime with the Scarecrow.”
Hendricks said he met Patsy Cline’s second husband, Charley Dick, years ago through mutual friends.
“He told me stories about Patsy Cline decking him in the back of the Grand ‘Ole Opry and he told me details about their family about their kids,” Hendricks said.
That meeting planted the seed that, years later, would end up becoming the show set to open next week.
Hendricks hooked up with Berry, known for his work with other dinner theater productions such as “Tony and Tina’s Wedding” with Pat Ryan, and Kato Ballroom productions such as of “The Best of Hank and Rita” with Joe Tougas and Ann Fee and “The Buddy Holly Story” featuring Colin Scharf.
They recruited Cesario, and the rest is history. The original show, written by Dean Ragan, launched in the 1980s. Hendricks and Berry say the script has had several updates over the years.
“It is staged as a live radio broadcast. Our comedian starts off the show on WINC, which is a radio station in Patsy’s hometown of Winchester, Virginia, and it’s staged as though an audience is there to listen to a retrospective of Patsy’s career,” Berry says. “And the band is there. What happened in the early ‘60s is that oftentimes radio stations could have a live studio band. And so it’s there to listen to this retrospective of her career.”