West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center is proud to present the new Dolly Parton musical, Here You Come Again: How Dolly Parton Saved My Life in 12 Easy Songs, written by Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre, and Tricia Paoluccio December 28 – 31, 2022 at the Marshall E. Rinker, Sr. Playhouse.
Touching and rollicking funny, the production is about a struggling NYC comedian named Kevin and his unusual relationship with his longtime idol, Dolly Parton. Using her trademark charm, she guides Kevin as he rediscovers hope in a trying time. Here You Come Again is a celebration of Parton’s music and the profound, yet humorous, things she has to say about life, love, and how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps during the toughest of times – even if your bootstraps don’t have rhinestones!
“There is not a person in the world who hasn’t thought about what it would be like to spend the night with Dolly Parton,” Vilanch says. “In our show, one lucky fan gets to do it – in his mind.”
OutClique had an opportunity to chat more about Here You Come Again with the queer icon. Known for his eclectic eyewear and collection of unique T-shirts, Vilanch is an Emmy Award-winning comedic writer and actor whose career began when he was an entertainment writer for The Chicago Tribune.
Denny Patterson: Thank you for taking some time to chat with me about Here You Come Again, Bruce! How did the concept and idea for this show come about?
Bruce Vilanch: Well, it was COVID, and we were all busy feverishly figuring out what to do with ourselves. My collaborators, Gabriel Barre, and his wife Tricia Paoluccio, had an idea and they called me about it. Tricia had an idea about doing something involving Dolly Parton because she is a huge Dolly fan, and she played the Dolly Parton role in the 9 to 5 musical on Broadway and on tour. She had met Dolly, and Dolly said, you’re the best one. You can do me for life. So, armed with that knowledge, they came up with this idea about a gay 40-year-old wannabe comedian, who is working at a comedy club in New York as a waiter. The club closes and his relationship ends, so he is forced to quarantine in the attic of his parents home in Longview, Texas, where he has an intimate relationship with his imaginary friend, Dolly Parton. He’s been talking to her for years, but this time, she actually materializes for him. So, it’s basically the two of them, a bunch of musicians, and all Dolly songs. I wrote it, and we did it as a Zoom for a theater in Florida that gave us a PPP grant, and they loved it. We had to go to Dolly for the music, and we thought she would shoot it down because it’s not her brand, but she loved it, and she’s now our partner.
DP: The show premiered at Delaware Theatre Company in September. How has it been received by audiences so far?
BV: It’s been great! Really, they love it. Trisha is absolutely brilliant, and she truly channels Dolly. She’s a terrific performer in her own right, but it’s exactly what we wanted it to be. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, and it resonates with people because everybody has had some kind of a weird COVID experience that changed their life.
DP: Is there anything in particular you hope audiences take away from the show?
BV: The positivity that Dolly has, and know that we all have it within us. We have to find the thing that we love to do and pursue it. That’s basically the message, and that’s so Dolly. When she gave us the rights, I said, I’m amazed that you have time for this. In between curing cancer and staging a moon landing, what hasn’t she done? There’s a very short list of things she hasn’t done now. Maybe she can work on world peace next.
DP: Has she seen it yet?
BV: She’s seen it on Zoom, and she gives notes, but we will be in Nashville in May, and I think will officially unveil it there.
DP: Why do you think Dolly has always been favored by the LGBTQ community? She’s an icon to us.
BV: (Laughs) She always says, if she wasn’t who she is, she’d be a drag queen. I think because, first of all, she is so sincere beneath all the artificiality. We talked about this, and she said, I had the music, the window dressing came later. I mean, she’s done what she had, which was this talent, and then she created this character who was Dolly Parton. The other Dolly Parton is in there, and the honesty is obvious. So, I think that appeals to gay people, who at this point are certainly trying to live authentic lives. She’s demonstrating how you can be authentic and still have fun. Still dress up, still be a clown, still be a character, and all that. I think we are always attracted to women in quotes. We’re always attracted to an extension of women, and that’s probably because so many of us have mothers who are interesting. Nature v. nurture, I think it’s nature, but I also think it’s nurtured by the people we grow up around.
DP: Is there a song of hers that is your absolute favorite?
BV: Gee, I wish I could off the top of my head just say yes. My favorite, actually, opens the show when the audience comes in. It’s “Baby I’m Burnin’,” which is a disco hit that she had. But I also love “9 to 5,” “Jolene,” the big ones. I love “9 to 5” because it’s so brilliantly written. It’s written to the beat of a typewriter, and it’s about working women. This was back in the day when we used typewriters. I know there are some people out there who are going, what’s a typewriter? So, guess that would be my favorite. Of course, it gets the biggest reaction. All the crowd pleasers are in the show, but there are also some songs that people don’t realize that she wrote. Even people who are Dollyphiles, they go, wow, I haven’t heard that one. A lot of these are from Tricia’s collection of favorites that had to be included. We knew what our story was going to be, but my job was to do the kind of, what I like to call, the Abba shoehorning. Like Mamma Mia!, taking a song and putting it in the right place so the audience will go, it’s funny how they worked that in.
DP: Do you think Here You Come Again could turn into a full-on Broadway production?
BV: It’s possible now. It initially wasn’t because Dolly had her eye on another show she was developing for Broadway, and she didn’t want to have two things in the market at the same time. But that has since shifted to a Netflix project because she made this gigantic Netflix deal. She could buy Bosnia with this Netflix deal. So, now that the door is open, who knows? We see it more as an Off-Broadway thing because it’s an intimate show and we’re playing at smaller spaces. Our template for this was a show called Always…Patsy Cline, which has been touring America since the Revolutionary War and playing at smaller theaters in smaller cities. We thought this show would be similar to that, but hey, if Broadway beckons! It would need to go into one of the smaller houses, like where Avenue Q played for years. That kind of a theater.
DP: Well, we are super excited that it will be here in South Florida at the Kravis Center. You were here in South Florida yourself not too long ago. Were you visiting for business or pleasure?
BV: I had a gig in Lauderdale. Most of the things I do are for charities, so I flew in for a benefit at the Savor Cinema, which used to be a church. Then it became a foreign film festival place, and they also book acts there now. I’ll actually be doing a party in Lauderdale the week the show is in West Palm Beach, so we’re going to drive up with a bunch of people to hoot and holler.
DP: I heard you also have a new book in the works. What can you tell us about that?
BV: It won’t be out for a while, but I’m writing it now, and by doing podcasts, I discovered that things I did in the 70s, there’s a whole generation of people who grew up watching them on the internet. Some of them were awful in their day. I mean, The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, The Brady Bunch Hour, so it’s basically about how I wrote the worst shows in television history and somehow survived. The title is, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time. I weigh in on a lot of other stuff, but I just didn’t want to write a memoir like everybody else writes a memoir.
DP: Do you have any goals or resolutions for 2023?
BV: The same one, which is to lose weight, which of course, I’ve had for many, many years. No, I’ve never done that because I think it’s always unrealistic. You’re spending a lot of time explaining to yourself why you didn’t reach that goal. The goals become self-evident when you go for them, the choices you make in life. I don’t need something, I hate to call it artificial, but something like that. I don’t need to have a carrot dangling in front of me.
DP: Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug?
BV: Yes, there is something that recently came out. We did a Paul Lynde Christmas special. I figured, if Hocus Pocus could get a sequel, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special could have a sequel. So, it’s called Making the Yuletide Gay: A Very Special Paul Lynde Christmas, and it’s with a guy named Michael Airington, who does a hysterical Paul Lynde impersonator, along with a cast of dead people because it’s from 1977. We’re pretending this is the Paul Lynde Christmas special that he never got to do, and we did it for World of Wonder. Stay up-to-date with Vilanch by visiting WeGotBruce.com. For more information and to purchase tickets for Here You Come Again, visit Kravis.org.
