Review: A Ride with Bob by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
This was my first time to see this comical-historical-pastoral concert piece by Ann Rapp and Texas music star big Ray Benson. You might well have seen early stagings in 2005 or later tour dates; the public message is that this four-night-and-two-matinee celebration is happening this week, February 20 - 24, as a farewell to Austin.
We may well hope that's a marketing ploy and not a definitive retirement decision, because the boys and girls in the band and in the cast are in fine form, and Ray Benson anchors the show with cheer and confidence.
In any case we can take heart from the theme of A Ride with Bob: Texas swing music belongs to us all and Bob won't ever go away. Right there on stage we can see the fiddling tradition passing, alive and well, down through the generations -- not only in the narrated story of Bob Wills himself but also in the enthusiastic participation (in declining order of chronological age) of Walt Roberts, Jason Roberts as the fiddlin' Bob Wills, the delightful 16-year-old Ruby Jane Smith and the solemn and promising fifth grader Colby Sheppard.
This jovial and tuneful evening is a blend of a good news mega-church service, a dance hall evening, serious biography and comedy routines of the sort that Homer and Jethro used to do for RCA and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Ray Benson is always himself and the fiction is that he's tired of Interstate bus riding ("an hour and a half just to Round Rock"). He wants the tour bus to take the same North Texas two-lane roads that Bob Wills and his Playboys used to take. He's surprised to find that he has an unannounced substitute driver -- and even more surprised when that driver turns out to be the spirit of the great Bob himself. Marco Perella is droll and energetic in that role. As he relates his life to the astonished Ray (who inevitably addresses him by his full name, "Bob Wills!" complete with the exclamation point), the large cast takes us through scenes from Bob's life.
It's quite a story. The Zach Theatre program reprises a bit of it, and a Wikipedia check confirms the central events: Wills grew up in a small town, heard a lot of African-American song and music as a child, left home to ride the rails, struggled with alcohol, worked as a barber, began playing fiddle professionally; his group was heard on the radio as the Light Crust Doughboys sponsored by Pappy O'Daniel, who later became governor of Texas (Ray Benson: "Well, that don't take much!"). Wills and his band played for medicine shows and dance halls, went to Hollywood, were interrupted by World War II and then formed again. Bob Wills was married four times, and each of those wives gets to speak her piece. Benson did meet the infirm and wheelchair-ridden Wills in 1973 just before a stroke put the great musician into his final coma.
Standouts in this cast of more than twenty are Steve Uzzell as the medicine hawker, Pappy O'Daniel, a silly gay Hollywood assistant director and even Elvis, and Timothy Curry as the emblematic Old Man Bridges, a sort of Uncle Remus of West Texas -- said with devout respect, for as a child I was captivated by that character in Joel Chandler Harris's stories. Curry functions as Bob Wills' conscience and sings the blues with a gorgeous, melodious bass-baritone voice.
All of this is done with great good humor, a fair amount of clowning, and -- above all -- the music by Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, including in later scenes the augmented band with saxophone, trombone and trumpet. The theme song is Wills' San Antonio Rose, the first lines of which are engraved on Wills' tombstone.
The added bonus at the Zach's 425-seat Topfer Theatre is the audience, a congregation of true believers in Texas, Texas swing and Asleep at the Wheel. I overheard one portly well-dressed man in black coat, black hat and bushy burnsides confide that he was seeing the show that evening for the 23th time "and that must be some kinda record!" This is a great crowd for those who'd like to sightsee the heart of Texas in the capital of Texas with Bob Wills(!), the King of Western Swing.
Review by Jeff Davis for www.austin.broadwayworld.com, February 21
EXTRA
Click to view excerpts from the Zach Theatre program for A Ride with Bob by Anne Rapp and Ray Benson
A Ride with Bob
by Ann Rapp and Ray Benson
Zach Theatre
