Cruising Close To Crazy

Country Western star Carolee is careening toward a climactic meeting with her old lover and singing partner. All the action takes place in her bedroom—in the rump of her customized million-dollar tour bus. Authentic country music background (the playwright traveled with Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, Tammy Wynette, and George Jones). Lends itself to cabaret performance format, but can also be performed as a “straight” play.

   “The play is set on the bus of a country music star, Carolee Crockett, a heartbroken, pill-popping crooner. Her bus is parked in the lot of a Grand Ole Opry kind of place, where she is about to be honored, in concert, along with…the singer and love of her life, who some months earlier had left her without a word in a motel in Albuquerque. If the plot has the feel of a country song— ‘You’re no better than you ought to be, but you’re good enough for me,’ to quote a song from the script—well, that’s on purpose. It was gleefully played by a gleefully miscast ensemble, which included Sigourney Weaver, as the whiny, weak Carolee; Kevin Kline as…the pot-smoking, libidinous and self-justifying Lothario, and the lithe, soft-spoken Phoebe Cates as Carolee’s bawdy, bosomy confidante.”

Bruce Weber, The New York Times