Stage Review - Always…Patsy Cline (Jewel Box)
Stage Review - Always…Patsy Cline
Presented By: Jewel Box Theatre - Poulsbo, WA
Show Run: October 26 - November 23, 2025
Date Reviewed: Sunday, November 16, 2025
Run Time: 1 Hours, 50 Minutes (inclusive of a 15-minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
With all of the jukebox musicals out there, a show like Always…Patsy Cline is inherently comforting, a musical built not on spectacle but on memory — memory of a voice, a friendship, a moment in American cultural history that still resonates six decades later. Jewel Box Theatre’s production, running through November 23, leans into that sentiment with intimate staging that fits the venue’s scale and songs that are reminiscent of a golden age in country music. Part jukebox musical, part two-person storytelling piece, the show recounts the true-life friendship between Patsy Cline and Houston fan Louise Seger, sewing together that narrative with many of Cline’s most beloved songs. It’s a piece that reminds audiences not only of Cline’s place in the American musical canon, but of how her storytelling was built on soul, pain, longing, and the unvarnished honesty that made her voice so distinctive.
The set design is nicely done for the small Jewel Box space. It’s challenging to place multiple locations in a venue of this size, especially with a story that shifts between them quickly. Add to that the placement of the live band, which is integral to the storytelling, and it could easily become a limiting factor — but here, Claude Abbott and BJ Scott have handled it well, providing an effective and uncluttered backdrop for this personal story of friendship. Lighting works in concert with that movement, and director Erin’s Scott’s blocking keeps the flow of the story going nicely, extending the stage out even through the theatre exits. The costumes are well done, with Anna Chollar Borer’s various Patsy Cline looks feeling exactly right for the era and Ronni Wolfe’s wardrobe as Louise perfectly matching her character’s personality. Little details like an added echo to the microphone when Patsy is onstage is a subtle but welcome touch. Creatively, the Jewel Box production of Always… Patsy Cline is solidly done.
As Patsy Cline, Anna Chollar Borer brings a wonderful voice to the stage and handles the score with confidence. She has a warm, pleasant tone and is clearly a technically gifted singer, navigating the musical’s catalogue with ease. Where the performance feels less fully realized is in Patsy’s more soulful and emotionally weighted material. Cline’s voice lived in a lower register with a textured, lived-in ache that reached directly into the audience’s collective heart, and it may simply be that Anna’s range doesn’t sit quite as low — a factor that is essential to delivering some of Patsy’s deepest and most vocally complex moments. Songs like “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray,” which depend on that grounded richness to truly devastate, land here with the notes intact but without the same emotional undercurrent. As a result, if you’re hoping to close your eyes and feel transported into the sound of Patsy herself, this may not be that version. But taken on its own terms, Anna’s performance is enjoyable, heartfelt in its way, and brings its own sense of nostalgia to the evening.
Counterbalancing Anna as Patsy is Ronni Wolfe as Louise Seger, who brings boundless energy and personality to the production. Ronni’s storytelling is full of warmth, humor, and a genuine sense of lived-in familiarity, and there are moments when her sheer level of engagement completely outpaces Anna’s. The relationship between the pair generally works, though I would like to see a little more of an even handed distribution of the energy between the characters. When this show succeeds, it requires not just the levels of energy between the pair to match, but it also needs the nature of the energy to be on par, so that their bond feels believable. It needs a sense that they should laugh together, cry together, and live in the emotional rhythms of their friendship. A bit more balance would make this connection feel even more authentic.
The band — Danilo Martinez on piano, Jack Quall on guitar, BJ Scott on bass, and Mark Jackson on drums — provides a tight, well-balanced musical foundation. They maintain a strong volume balance with the actors and deliver that classic honky tonk sound with an authenticity that often becomes the production’s most transportive element, even when the vocal interpretation doesn’t fully land.
There is genuine charm in Always… Patsy Cline as a piece, and Jewel Box’s production finds much of that charm through the cast’s performance and the strength of the live band. The production represents a pleasant revisit of the catalogue of one of the greatest country singers to have ever lived, albeit in a life much too short, and while the heart of Patsy’s voice — the ache, the grit, the vulnerability — remains at arm’s length here, Always…Patsy Cline is nonetheless an entertaining and nostalgic night of theatre.
Always…Patsy Cline runs on stage at the Jewel Box Theatre in Poulsbo through November 23. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.jewelboxpoulsbo.org/.
Photo credit: Kathy Berg
