The final show of PCPA’s summer season at the Solvang Festival Theater is Joanna Murray-Smith’s Songs for Nobodies. This one-woman musical show stars Bethany Thomas (seen earlier this summer as Becky in Waitress) as five famous vocalists: Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, and Maria Callas. Thomas also plays the featured “nobodies”: the non-famous women whose lives intersected with these stars in life-changing ways. These individual stories are told in the form of dramatic monologues, sometimes with Thomas switching between characters during conversation.
A dozen songs from the catalogs of these iconic singers are peppered throughout the monologues. The stories push the characters toward experiencing each singer’s performance so we can all see the “spell they cast on the world around them,” says Music Director Jake Cannon.
With Cannon leading on keyboard, the music is provided by a live, three-piece band offstage, one that also includes local musicians Evan Goldhahn on drums and Nancy Nagano on cello.
Cannon describes the theme that binds all five stories as self-acceptance or discovery of self. “These [women] either learn something about themselves through the interaction they have with the star, or they decide something as a result of the moment they saw this famous singer perform,” he says. Each character is wrestling with a personal issue when they connect with these stars, making the scenes rich, amusing, and intense. “A lot of passion,” says Cannon, “and a lot of trying to comprehend really big feelings in the middle of a normal life.”
He continues, “If you enjoy entertainment, regardless of genre, in Songs for Nobodies, you’re watching a master at work. [Thomas] inhabits these worlds. She doesn’t have to conjure them.”
It’s your last chance in 2025 for theater under the stars in Solvang — see Songs for Nobodies August 28 through September 7 at Solvang Festival Theater (420 2nd St., Solvang). See pcpa.org.
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