Star-crossed

MOSES LAKE — “Bright Star” is not your grandparents’ musical.

“It's modern-style Broadway,” said Toby Black, who’s directing and choreographing the show for Basin Community Theatre. “It's not ‘My Fair Lady’ or ‘The Music Man.’ It hasn't been around for 50 years or whatever, so it's not well known. But the story is an everyday life situation. It's about love. It's about friendship. It's about heartbreak. It's about trials and tribulations that you have to dig yourself out of. And forgiveness, there's a lot of that.”

Co-written by actor and banjo virtuoso Steve Martin and singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, “Bright Star” first came to the stage in 2014. The music leans heavily toward bluegrass and traditional Americana, which meant Black had to take a different approach.

“Because we don't have (a lot of) banjo players and mandolin players in our area, we went with the professional canned music that came with our license,” Black said. “We kept the choreography true to the style of the place, so there's clogging and social dance and square dance styles in there.”

“Bright Star” takes place in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in 1945-46, with frequent flashbacks to 1923. It’s a combination of two love stories with a plot twist that ties them together. There are star-crossed lovers, lies and deceptions and emotional ups and downs. 

In 1945, we meet Billy Cane (David Andersen), freshly back from World War II and returning to Zebulon, North Carolina, to find his mother dead and his childhood friend, Margo (Isabel Sica), much more grown-up than when he left. Billy, an aspiring writer, takes his stories to the Asheville Southern Journal, where he meets editor Alice Murphy (Amy O’Donnell), who has her own memories of Zebulon and a youthful romance with Jimmy Ray Dobbs (played by Tim O’Donnell, Amy’s real-life husband).

Amy is a veteran of four or five BCT shows, she said, but this is Tim’s first time with a major role, he said.

“We jump back and forth in the story between being young teenagers falling in love to (being) in our 40s dealing with some traumatic situations that have kept us apart,” Amy said.

“Things got off track there very early on and not because of anything we did,” Tim said.

Meanwhile, in the 1940s, Billy and Margo negotiate the pitfalls and joys of love themselves, with a deep secret lurking in the background.

The emotional tone of the play makes for some intense singing, Amy said.

“We have a song called ‘I Had a Vision,’ where we're just really sorrowful,” she said. “For me, that was a very scary thing about being in the show, but also has been really exciting. It gets pretty raw, which is scary, but it's kind of an amazing experience to live that story.”

“I've been watching Amy do these shows forever,” Tim said. “And she talks about how those kinds of heavier scenes can be really difficult to act and a little terrifying.”

It’s not all heavy-duty emotion, though, Amy said. There are spots that are funny and light along with some bittersweet. 

“We’ve brought so many of the name shows to Moses Lake that (we thought) why not bring something that's unknown and give our community something new to find that they love?” said producer Marion Wyman. “And I think they'll find that they love this. It's a beautiful story.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

‘Bright Star’

Moses Lake High School Theater

7:10 p.m. April 11, 12, 13 and 19; 1:10 p.m. April 13 and 20.

Tickets $20 online or $22 at the door

Personnel

Alice Murphy:  Amy O'Donnell

Billy Cane:  David Andersen 

Jimmy Ray Dobbs:  Tim O'Donnell

Mayor Josiah Dobbs:  Tom Christensen

Margo Crawford:  Isabel Sica

Mama Murphy:  Sheryl Cassella

Daddy Murphy:  Ryan Christensen                                     

Daddy Cane:  Ted Mack

Lucy Grant:  Shanna Stakkeland

Darryl Ames:  Toby Black

Edna:  Alice Dale

Stanford Adams:  Parrish Stakkeland

Florence:  Paige Perkins 

Alice Murphy understudy: Shanna Stakkeland

Ensemble:  Talia Nunnery, Sawyer Roylance, Paige Meredith, Abby Christensen, Mallorie Johnson, Emma Leavitt, Crystal Zurligen.

Director:  Toby Black

Producer:  Marion Wyman

Co-producer:  Shaila Hardy

Choreographer:  Toby Black 

Music director:  Tim O'Donnell

Stage manager:  Tom Silva

    Billy (David Andersen, left) learns from his childhood friend Margo (Isabel Sica) and his father Daddy Cane (Ted Mack) that his mother passed away while he was off fighting World War II in Basin Community Theatre’s production of “Bright Star,” which opened Thursday.
  

    Alice (Amy O’Donnell) sings “If You Knew My Story” as she steps off the train at the opening of “Bright Star.”
  

    Billy (David Andersen, left) tries to submit some stories he’s written to Darryl Ames (Toby Black) and Lucy Grant (Shanna Stakkeland), the cynical staff at the Asheville Southern Journal.