Dear Betty Lynn ~ Having just witnessed your next to last night as Dolly Levi in ‘Hello, Dolly!’ I immediately went back into your songbook and am listening to your rendition of ‘Come On, Come On’ as I write this. After such a wonderfully affirming celebration of musical theater, I had to hear further ruminations on life through the story only a song can tell. I started out with your ‘Hope’ album, and that gorgeous almost-liturgical title track by Jason Robert Brown, where our hope is our only religion. I seek out a way of understanding our present condition, a way to make sense of the madness that is the world around us. Whether or not the answer is to be found in a song, a work of art, or the voice of one of our generation’s great vocal talents, I do not know. You remain, however, a vessel who has always illuminated deeper truths. Maybe that’s why your recent performance in ‘Hello, Dolly!’ became so much more than a theatrical legend taking on a legendary role.
I still have fond memories of how you stepped into the role of Norma Desmond, and with laser-like precision and practiced artistry, made the role into your own. Following in such famed turbans as Gloria Swanson and Glenn Close, you rose above the fray the world wanted so badly to see battered and scarred, and you gave Norma not only the heart that was so brittle and broken, but the voice that she, and the show, so badly needed. Ever since then, your voice has supplied a way for me to connect to the human condition. From the song collections of that time – ‘With One Look’, ‘Much More’ and ‘Heart to Heart’ – and the live performances at London and Carnegie Hall – your voice has mapped out a way to unlock a few secrets of love and loss and simple longing. I didn’t always want to know, and I didn’t always learn them well, but I could count on you to make it feel a little more bearable, and breathtakingly more beautiful.
I wonder if you were haunted or comforted by the ghostlights that formed the namesake of your 2014 collection. The gentle ‘Come to Me, Bend to Me’ and the gorgeously portentous ‘If You Go Away’ nestled alongside a melancholy ‘Bewitched’ and ‘Lazy Afternoon’ gave ‘Ghostlight’ its dream-like atmosphere, wherein you were able to craft a cinematic soundscape, painted solely by your guiding voice. The ‘Story Songs’ that formed your epic double album of the same name were just further proof that nobody could tell a tale through melody and music better than you. The way that you occupied different characters in miraculous fashion, inhabiting and then becoming them through studied nuances and microscopic adjustments, apparent to the fascinated rapture of the listener, was a sight and sound to behold. While it’s one thing to take on a single song, it’s quite another matter to hold an entire show on your shoulders, but we already knew you could do it.
It takes more than a skilled singer to transmit so many layers of meaning – it takes a cunning actor too, and even though you expressed some surprise at being asked to step into the indefatigable boots of Dolly Levi, I always knew you would be superb. Who better to pilot this train of beloved Americana through the country, dispersing wisdom and warmth and happiness to cities near and far, than Broadway’s own Texas cowgirl? It wouldn’t have worked if you were merely game for the challenge – it required a full investment, a commitment, a generosity of spirit that only a consummate professional could conjure.
Throughout it all, there was a slight but absolutely necessary sliver of darkness that lurked beneath the most upbeat moments, a darkness that you have often thrillingly channeled, from your demonic Southern sorceress in ‘Preacher’ to the imperious (and let’s not forget murderous) Norma Desmond to the dominating mother in ‘Carrie’ and the ferociously-wounded feline Grizabella in ‘Cats’. There are some murky undercurrents even in the confection-like world of Dolly Levi. You manage to find the lonely, desperate pathos that belies all the pastel splendor around you, plumbing the riches of that reservoir to garner the emotional heft that raises the show into something grand and expansive.
As ‘Before the Parade Passes Us By’ began, you wiped your tears away, and you might as well have wiped all our tears away – so enraptured were we at the way life could be so bursting with joy and yet sadness at the same time. Somehow you showed us the strength and conviction to still be part of it, to dive back into the tumult no matter how much it may have hurt us in the past. The memories of lost ones are ever on the edge of when we think things might be ok, and you as Dolly, sadly freed from the binds of a beloved lost husband and trying valiantly to move forward, led the way. How to bring the rest of us so much gladness when your own heart is broken? I don’t know, but you did it, and you’ve been bringing us such happiness for a year.
The harmonious way you worked with the rest of the ‘Hello, Dolly!’ is a lesson in itself, and what a glorious ensemble it was. Lewis J. Stadlen matched your optimism with entertaining pessimism until you met happily in the middle. Nic Rouleau and Sean Burns won hearts and burned the boards with their electrifying singing and dancing, while Analisa Leaming and Kristen Hahn brought enough wit and comedic elegance to stand out in a troop of outstanding performers. Throughout it all, you wove a fascinating arc and managed to match the very spirit and essence of Dolly’s outlook on life.
How wonderful to see an actor being so generous – the genuine joy you conveyed while watching the company whirl around you elicited its own triumphant joy – happiness feasting on happiness when we were all so starved for it. We needed to smile. We needed to laugh. We needed to believe in a simpler, sweeter world, when people might actually be kind and decent to one another, a forgotten moment when we got through the darker times together.
After performing this demanding show for such a stretch, you more than deserve a break. Maybe you will return to your beloved ranch, to the horses that must have missed you so, to your faithful companion Lucas who just may need you more than we do, to recharge your creative batteries and simply be – and I wish you all the best. Selfishly I hope that you will come back to entertain and enlighten us sooner rather than later, to enrich our lives with the wonder of your voice and your talent, and to engage in whatever strikes your passion and fancy, the way Dolly returned to triumphantly descend that grand staircase before the parade passed by. In the same munificent manner that she viewed sharing her wealth, so too have you given to all of us over the years.
That communal exchange between performer and audience, and the way that this role fits so perfectly into spreading that love around is a once-in-a-lifetime collision of kismet, destiny and happy circumstance. You’ve been giving us such gifts throughout your entire career, and such generosity is rare. In the last year you’ve dedicated yourself to Dolly Levi, sharing a love and unbridled hope for the world throughout our country – and in a country that’s not always what it should be, we needed it more than ever. Thank you, Ms. Buckley, for sharing such excellence in your craft. Thank you for being such an advocate for people less fortunate and strong than you. Thank you, above all else, for showing us what loveliness is still to be found in this world.
COME ON COME ON, IT’S GETTING LATE NOW
COME ON COME ON, TAKE MY HAND
COME ON COME ON, YOU JUST HAVE TO WHISPER
COME ON COME ON, I WILL UNDERSTAND
