THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Runs through: May 8

A tale of angst with a western twang, Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky delivers. The musical, receiving its world premiere, contains just about every element one could wish for from an evening of theater. Its story—about a depressed, alcoholic, has-been country-western singer finding a kind of grace through his unusual friendship with a lonely and precocious young woman half his age—takes us on a journey of the mind, spirit, and heart, buoying us up with some toe-tapping, heart-rending songs that not only captivate, but serve the pragmatic requirement of moving the story along and charting the characters' growth and development. Its score, a kind of stripped-down country western ( defined regionally much more by the prairie-swept landscape of Montana than the big business of Nashville ) veers between the comedic, the lively, and the tear-jerking. Its tone and plot arc remind one of Annie Proulx, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer who mined the hearty, yet broken, hearts of modern-day Americans carving out their existence on the vast plains of the hardscrabble west.

For all this, Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky could still use some refining, mainly in the area of plot development. The show opens with Floyd ( an honest, endearing portrayal by the play's author, David Cale ) at his height musically, performing a couple of songs at a concert. We then shift quickly to three years later, when Floyd's demons ( depression, alcoholism, and the requisite broken heart ) have all but consumed him: he's living in his car in a liquor-fueled stupor and not caring about much. Because we don't immediately know what brought him so low, we're in the dark about how he fell so far. And we need to have had at least a hint of that up front, so that we can invest more of our feelings into the character. When Clea ( Faryl Millet, making her professional debut here; she possesses a gorgeous rough-hewn voice perfect for the vocal demands of the role and a knack for creating a whole person with unique style ) , an ambitious, hard-talking, and extremely compassionate young woman stumbles upon Floyd in his makeshift life, she begins a campaign for his salvation. Again, we need to see a little more reason for her wanting to do this, beyond the milk of human kindness running thick through her veins ( since she's an aspiring singer/songwriter herself, maybe she could have found out about Floyd's renown earlier on and is looking out for herself … and then finds more than she bargained for when she discovers how much she cares about him ) .

These are small, easy fixes. This is the kind of show that runs away from you in terms of time because Cale has created such agonizingly real portraits. The music here, even for people who hate country music ( like me ) draws you in, because it's not only winsome, it's smart. And its lyrics explore the kind of issues ( growing older, needing someone, the loss of one's dreams ) with which we can all identify. Floyd and Clea touches both your heart and your mind.

The show runs only until May 8, so it's a good idea to grab a ticket before it disappears. You just might be witness to more than just an exemplary show; you might also see a great play in its origins and a great star in the making ( Faryl Millet ) .