Christanna Rowader’s star shines bright in Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star, a Golden Era-style Hollywood weeper given the most gorgeous of bluegrass scores and just as many joyous laughs as soapy tears on the Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre stage.

Meet 38-year-old Asheville, NC literary journal editor Alice Murphy (Ovation Award-winner Rowader), whose long-ago teenage romance with small-town scion Jimmy Ray (Nic Olsen) may have met with the approval of her parents (Greg Nicholas and Dynell Leigh) but not with Jimmy Ray’s father (Richard Malmos as power-wielding mayor Josiah Dobbs), whose retaliatory actions turned a sunny teen into the hard-edged all-business adult she is today’s 1945.

Meanwhile, young G.I. Billy Cane (Zach Fogel) has returned from WWII with dreams of literary stardom, dreams briefly dampened by Daddy’s (Jamie Snyder) news that the soldier boy’s beloved mother has been “taken away” by a midnight visitor.

Since the much-renowned Asheville Southern Journal seems as good a place as any to jump-start a career in creative writing, Billy leaves behind pert local librarian Margo Crawford (Emily Chelsea) and heads off to the biggish city where he makes it past editor Alice’s assistants Daryl Ames (Dylan Pass) and Lucy Grant (Dayna Sauble) to meet the lady herself and impress her with his storytelling promise (and a brand-new letter of recommendation from long-ago deceased Thomas Wolfe).

Though said letter fails to fool seen-it-all Alice, Billy’s chutzpah and talent prove impossible to resist, leaving our handsome young hero hopeful that he may one day see his name in the prestigious literary journal and provide Alice with her next published writer.

And this is only the beginning of a story that would do Barbara Stanwyck’s Stella Dallas or Imitation Of Life’s Claudette Colbert (or Lana Turner) proud.

Already a feel-good crowd-pleaser in its 2014 Old Globe World Premiere, Bright Star’s 2016 Broadway debut scored it five Tony nominations including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score.

Now, three years later, Bright Star arrives at Candlelight with Chuck Ketter expertly recreating Walter Bobbie’s ingenious original direction Kelly Baker doing the same with Josh Rhodes’ equally imaginative Broadway choreography on scenic designer Eugene Lee’s expansive original Broadway set.

Though Bright Star’s rather pedestrian lyrics remain the show’s weaker element (“She’s gone. She’s gone.” “A man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do, when a man’s gotta do, what he’s got to.” “You can’t take him. He’s my baby. You can’t take my baby boy.”), the melodies Martin and Brickell have written are blessed with one bluegrass hook after another.

Bright Star transitions seamlessly from the 1940s to the ‘20s and back again on Lee’s nationally touring set, one whose mobile, multipurpose “bandstand” houses four of the production’s six-musician orchestra* under keyboard master Ryan O’Connell’s expert musical direction.

Meanwhile, multitalented ensemble members Nicholas Alexander (Max), Tucker Boyes (Dr. Norquist), John Wilford McGavin (Trainmaster), Monika Peña (Edna), Kirklyn Robinson (Kate, Government Clerk), Thomas Stanley (Stanford Adams), Lisa Stone (Florence), and Micah Tangermann serve as Bright Star’s ever-present North Carolinian Greek chorus, observing, participating, and occasionally even pulling the strings while dancing to Rhodes’s mesmerizing choreography, as original as Broadway choreography gets.

Rowader’s Alice tops even her Ovation-winning star turn as Ragtime’s Mother (a role she reprised at Candlelight last year), giving us both both the lovestruck teen and the life-hardened adult, singing in the most glorious of country mezzos, and digging deep into Alice’s well of youthful joy and adult pain.

Olsen’s charismatic Jimmy Ray is the salt-of-the-earth hunk nobody in their right mind could possibly resist, Fogel is so commanding and confident a presence as Billy, it’s hard to believe he’s not yet twenty, and Chelsea is perky perfection as hometown girl Margo.

As for the the sassy, citified Lucy and Daryl, Sauble and Pass not only show off expert comedic chops, they earn some of the evening’s loudest cheers for Bright Star’s politically incorrect song-and-dance celebration of alcoholism and its many rewards, aka “Another Round.”

Last but not least, Southland favorites Leigh, Nicholas, and Snyder are all three terrific as a trio of loving if flawed parents, while the equally fine Malmos earns some well-deserved boos as the most dastardly of dads.

Jane Greenwood’s pitch-perfect period Broadway costumes (coordinated by Merrill Grady), Michon Gruber-Gonzales’s spot-on hair and wigs, Aspen Rogers’ striking lighting, and a crystal-clear sound design complete a Broadway-caliber production design all the way.

Rachel McLaughlan is assistant choreographer. Jonathan Daroca is lighting associate. Caleb Shiba is stage manager. Katie McGhie understudies the role of Alice.

Continuing a six-month trifecta of live-band artistic triumphs, Bright Star (like Bonne & Clyde and Titanic The Musical before it) is one of Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s all-time best.

*Julian Cantrell, O’Connell, James Saunders/Megan Shung-Smith, Adrian Vega, Alan Waddington, and Max Wagner,

Candlelight Pavilion, 455 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont.
www.candlelightpavilion.com

–Steven Stanley
April 28, 2019
Photos: Demetrios Katsantonis

Tags: Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Edie Brickell, Los Angeles Theater Review, Steve Martin