That was the day Real classic rock, at Seacoast Rep BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	BUDDY: THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY Written by Alan James and Rob Bettinson. Directed by Richard M. Parison Jr. Produced at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre, in Portsmouth | through July 10 | call 603.433.4472

Looking backwards from the era of iPods to the salad days of rock, it seems like the kids used to dance a lot more — and did so without inhibitions, irony, or the benefit of hallucinogens. Of course, those ’50s kids did have the advantage of some utterly fresh new tunes, styles, and personalities, some of the foremost of which are resurrected in Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a hopping pleasure of a musical on stage now at Seacoast Rep, in Portsmouth.

This is indeed the tale of Buddy’s rise and untimely snuffing, but much of his story is his music, and the play’s narrative arc is thus a wonderfully lightweight thing. Led by the excellent and endearing Brendan Murphy in the title role, Buddy is held aloft by fine renditions of some of the most seminal rock and roll in the American songbook, performed by an impressive ensemble of actor/musicians.

Buddy opens with the 19-year-old’s earliest 1956 appearances with the Crickets — bassist Joe Mauldin and drummer Jerry Allison (Devon Goffman and Ari Wilford, energetic and unaffectedly boyish) — as a reluctant country act on Lubbock, Texas’s KDAV. It moves through their 1957 recording sessions to wind up at Buddy’s final show, in 1959, with the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, the evening before all three were killed in the famous "Day the Music Died" plane crash.

On the way, it addresses no small number of details and origin myths. The signature spectacles? Buddy pronounces that he wants the look that says, "Buddy Holly wears glasses, and here they are!"

A fine cast of musician/actors take us through it all with top-notch and quite varied ensemble work — Brett Wulfson turns from playing Buddy’s wife Maria Elena to pick up a trumpet; Jackie Bellows sings radio jingles, struts around as a producer’s hip wife, and plays a mean piano, too. Other cast members move between roles as DJs, producers, and singers and musicians in a band that at its biggest includes five backup vocalists, drums, violin, trumpet, trombone, piano, tenor sax, guitar, and bass. There are no weak links to be found here, and the switch-’em-up ensemble style gives the show an exciting, intimate feel.

There are also a couple scenes’ worth of priceless comic timing, the best of which takes place outside the stage door of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The two cool-surly black bouncers (the scene-stealing Raphael Rawlins and Darius Harper) first laugh off Joe and Jerry’s mild claims that they’re the Crickets. "Well, if you’re all Crickets, what color’s Buddy Holly?" one jives them. Comes a pause, during which Buddy makes a timely entrance, and then: "White!" the bouncers squeal in unison, collapsing into infectious laughter. "Well, we sound black," Buddy and the Crickets console each other as they hurry on in, and then they go on to rock the skeptical house with "Not Fade Away," easily recognizable even now to several generations of Deadheads.

As Buddy himself, Murphy is a joy for ears and eyes alike. He effortlessly recreates that signature Holly clip and syncopation, the fleet yodelly skip of his voice meeting the stratosphere. Murphy is equally effective — and beguiling — at conveying Holly’s youth and energy. His boyish candor and effervescence are winningly unforced, and he manages to do what’s often tough in a bio-show: to draw a character, rather than just strike the poses of a legend. Murphy’s Buddy wears a half-awed, half-conscious smile for much of the show, as if he couldn’t quite believe his luck.

That luck runs out, of course, and the play handles the tragedy stylishly, with a minimum of fuss and sentimentalism. The last 10 numbers of the show — the greater part of the second act — are set during the last show of that fateful tour, with the entire ensemble, including the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens (the formidable Eric Duchesne and Seth Mazzaglia). For anyone with half a heart for rock and roll, these scenes are just a gas. The band rocks, and the backup girls get sufficiently riled up to knock over the occasional music stand.

The lights go down for a moment, and we hear a brief announcement of the crash that would end the music in just a few hours. But Buddy doesn’t dwell on that. Instead, it brings the lights back up for a rendition of "Johnny B. Goode" so rousing that, on the night I attended, the senior ladies of the audience were on their feet shaking ass with a skill and abandon you’d be hard-pressed to find in their daughters.

Even in the line for the ladies’ room, post-show, those older women were still some giddy. "I’m going after him!" squealed one, to which a laconic Gen-Xer replied, "I think he’s more my age, Mom." And it could be that this flushed old bopper spoke for a generation with her cackling riposte: "Well, you’re too slow on the move!" Indeed.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com