Pewter Plough Playhouse's "September Song"

Tonight I had the honor of attending one of the last performances of The Pewter Plough Playhouse's of "September Song" which pays tribute to the colorful PPP founder's overachieving life of idiosyncratic accomplishment. That man, Jim Buckley, turned 100 years young earlier this month and the play has run the entire month in his honor but ends New Year's Eve. The show centered around the life of this rather remarkable man and his life emphasizing the thread of the Great American Songbook musical canon pulling from it numerous standards that were apropos to each phase and significant event and relevant element of Mr. Buckley's life from his formative years to the near-present. Mr. Buckley who until a recent fall attended each showing of this musical play sitting in the front row next to the seat I sat in tonight was not in attendance unfortunately for me as I would have liked to have met him. The cast of three men and two women was delightful and each brought something different and essential to the ensemble cast perfectly embodying the principle of  "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Noteworthy to me is the fact the entire PPP facility was years ago resourcefully remodeled and reconfigured into the current Pewter Plough Playhouse, a building I have passed by on Main Street West Village Cambria for the better part of the past 30 years with barely a notice. 

Play program cover showing Jim Buckley.

Buckley home-turned-PPP stage with the former backyard now covered by the indoor audience area.

Both photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).