Players Centre celebrates Cole Porter through his wife in ‘Love, Linda’

Cole Porter’s wife, Linda, was never a singer or any kind of performer, but she becomes one in the one-person musical “Love, Linda: The Life of Mrs. Cole Porter,” which has its Sarasota area debut as part of the Summer Sizzler series at the Players Centre for Performing Arts.

The production reunites actress Colleen Sudduth Buchmeier with director Jared Walker, who first worked together in 2011 on the Players production of “Victor/Victoria.” Buchmeier was featured in the national tour of that musical with Toni Tennille, and she performed on Broadway in the original run of “Sunset Boulevard,” before settling in the Sarasota area and raising two children.

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Walker said he’s excited to work with Buchmeier “one-on-one” after he also directed her in “Bullets Over Broadway.”

“She has such a beautiful voice and how could you not want to hear her sing Cole Porter music?” he said. “It’s hard music and it takes someone very skilled and talented to be able to sing this kind of music.”

The music is “definitely a big challenge,” Buchmeier said during an interview early in the rehearsal process. “I’m saying the lines and singing the songs while I’m walking or on the treadmill, figuring out how to breathe, when she can take a sip of champagne and the whole emotional arc of it. I’m building up my stamina.”

Mikal Mancini is the musical director.

Walker said the show is set as if Linda Porter has invited some friends to her home and is telling the story of her life with Cole, how they met, and their relationship. She was a wealthy socialite from Kentucky who delighted in the high life that Porter often captured in his musicals and songs.

“It’s mostly a lot of reminiscing about their life together, the love they shared and how she inspired him and he inspired her,” Buchmeier said.

During his long career, Porter wrote the words and music for such shows as “Anything Goes,” “Can-Can,” and “Kiss Me Kate” and had dozens of hits. The music includes about two dozen songs, including such familiar titles as “I Love Paris,” “Night and Day,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Let’s Misbehave,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Love for Sale” and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”

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Their relationship was not without its challenges. Walker said the script by Stevie Holland (who originally played Linda Porter) and Gary William Friedman deals frankly with Porter’s homosexuality, which his wife knew about, and how “his sexual appetite for men changed over time. Their love was real, but his relationships with men grew to be too much to handle for her and they grew apart.” After Porter broke his legs in a horse-riding accident in 1937 that left him disabled, Linda came back to help care for him until her death.

In addition to working together as performer and director, Buchmeier and Walker performed together in a production of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” at Venice Theatre in 2012.

‘Love, Linda: The Life of Mrs. Cole Porter’

By Stevie Holland and Gary William Friedman. Directed by Jared Walker. Runs July 13-24 at the Players Centre for Performing Arts, Crossing at Siesta Key shopping mall, 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Suite 1130. Tickets are $23.50-$26.50; $14 for students. 941-365-2494; theplayers.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Players Centre’s ‘Love, Linda’ tells story of Cole Porter and his wife