Love, Linda at 35below

There’s no tip jar or cocktail service, but the blackbox 35below space at Asheville Community Theatre is essentially a piano bar through Aug. 25. The show Love, Linda features Karen Covington-Yow as Linda Lee Thomas Porter, the Kentucky-born socialite who married songwriter and composer Cole Porter in Paris in 1919, when he was 28 and she was 36. As Linda recounts their rather unusual marriage, she illustrates the emotions and stories with renditions of more than 15 of Porter’s songs.

It’s a pleasant enough diversion at 75 minutes with no intermission, and the central appeal is the music, including such brilliant tunes as “So in Love” and “I Love Paris.” Covington-Yow’s delivery of “In the Still of the Night” is particularly lovely, and “Miss Otis Regrets” got the requisite laughs from the sold-out opening night audience.

The accompanist is listed in the program as “the orchestra,” which is only a slight overstatement, as the poker-faced Bob Strain produces the full sounds of a seeming jazz duo (piano and upright bass) from his electronic keyboard. His brief solos are highlights of the show.

And the show needs highlights. The book is by Stevie Holland, a cabaret singer who created the one-act play for herself with assistance from Gary William Friedman, credited as co-author and arranger. But any expectation that you’ll gain insights into Cole (who was gay) or Linda (who tolerated his extramarital affairs) or their marriage (which had rocky times but lasted until Linda’s death in 1954) is soon dashed. The poignant details and nicely crafted anecdotes you might expect from a biographical solo performance are missing here. Love, Linda is closer to a Wikipedia summary than to a memoir. Events are recounted without context, emotions are stated but not elaborated, shows and celebrities are name-checked and quickly dropped. Much of the time you don’t even know what year it is she’s describing… to mention just one of the countless facts that beg to be shared but aren’t.

The amateurish writing does Covington-Yow no favors. Under the direction of accomplished musician Misty Theisen, Covington-Yow is an appealing and assured presence, but without rich material to dramatize, she’s stranded in the mode of presentation rather than performance. She can’t become Linda in our eyes because the book doesn’t provide enough of a Linda for her to become.

Fortunately, she has a good voice that she has clearly worked hard to master, and she delivers the songs brightly and flawlessly. She doesn’t add anything particularly new to the numbers, and you may find yourself recalling more emotionally charged or pyrotechnic singers you’ve heard sing Porter in the past. But Covington-Yow has the advantage of intimacy in the tiny 35below, and she connects with each and every audience member, winning them over despite the show’s inherent handicaps.

If anything, Love, Linda is an argument for a more-serious, better-researched, more passionately written one-person show about either Porter, Mr. or Mrs. They led glittering lives with roller-coaster highs and lows and maintained an unlikely partnership for nearly four decades. Even after seeing this show, you can only imagine what that must have been like. Love, Linda provides mere black-and-white glimpses of lives that were clearly lived in the richest Technicolor.

Love, Linda runs through Aug. 25 at 35below. Visit ashevilletheatre.org for details and tickets.

Rehearsal photo courtesy of the production.

Cole Porter in the 1930s.