STAGE REVIEW : ‘Buddy’ Rocks--but Hardly Rolls

They’re thinking of putting Buddy Holly’s picture on a postage stamp, just like Elvis Presley’s.

And why not? Holly was the exemplary rock ‘n’ roller. Indeed, his image in life--as in the synthetic touring musical about him at the Orange County Performing Arts Center--couldn’t have been cleaner if it were airbrushed.

Accordingly, the ersatz performance delivered Tuesday by Chip Esten, the star of “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story,” is an attempt to memorialize all that was best about the boy from Lubbock, Texas, who became a musical legend with his glasses on.

What was best, of course, were the songs. He had 10 big hits over a span of 15 months before he died at age 22 in a 1959 plane crash.

Esten does those golden oldies--”That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “Oh Boy,” “Maybe Baby,’ to name just a few--with all the ‘50s-vintage innocence you could ask for.

The problem, though, is how to dramatize the rest of Holly’s clean-cut life, which was not only cut short but lacked the sort of up-from-under struggle that makes for interesting show-biz heroics.

There were no victories over poverty. No victories over alcohol or drugs. No triumph over racial discrimination. Nobody stood in Holly’s way or offered more than minor resistance, not even the usual collection of fire-and-brimstone preachers, according to “Buddy.”

Holly’s artistic struggle, if you can call it that, extends feebly through the sketchiest first act imaginable and lacks any dramatic impact. One of the many hokey anti-climaxes comes in a thin scene with a country-record producer in Nashville.

“You’ve got to be the biggest no-talent I’ve ever worked with,” the producer tells the incipient rock ‘n’ roller during their first recording session.

“I just want to make my music my way,” says Buddy, sticking up for his principles with a nerdy pout. “I don’t want to be a country star.”

That’s it, folks.

Once past the first bump in the road, Holly simply went straight to the top. Even when he is booked at the Apollo Theater in Harlem--in the mistaken belief that he and the Crickets are a black act--the reception is miraculous.

“You cats are outta sight--gimme some skin!” says the skeptical Apollo emcee after his conversion to the Buddy Holly fan club.

When it comes to the dialogue, no cliche is left unused.

As for the pair of major events in Holly’s life that might have lent themselves to dramatization--his breakup with the Crickets and his marriage to a Puerto Rican record-company receptionist--they too are treated with tepid cliches, as though not worth exploring.

Esten’s performance as an actor, meanwhile, never rises above the level of community theater, nor does that of Lauree Taradash (who plays his wife, Maria Elena) or Bobby Prochaska and Tom Nash (as the Crickets).

Given their material--songs aside--it doesn’t matter. The script of this show makes the “Elvis” musical that stopped at the Center a few years ago seem in retrospect like high-tech Shakespeare.

“Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Thursday-Sunday, 8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $21-$44. (714) 556-2787. Running time 2 hours, 47 minutes.