A blast from the past done modern style comes to Oahu this week with “Letters From Home: The 50 State Tour” playing a one-nighter Wednesday at the Paliku Theatre.
The show honors the traditions of the classic USO shows that brought a touch of home to American military personnel in the days when snail mail was the only way of keeping in touch with the folks back home. The Paliku show marks the first time “Letters From Home” founder and performer Erinn Dearth is visiting Hawaii. It also sees her past the halfway mark in an ambitious commitment to bring the show to all 50 states.
The tour is a four-month road trip for Dearth, her co-star Dan Beckmann and their four-person production team. They are driving across the contiguous 48 states, flying to Alaska and, of course, to the Aloha State.
“It’s something that we’ve always wanted to do,” Dearth said, on the road en route to Idaho. “When the pandemic happened, it kind of put it on the shelf for a few years. But as we were doing pandemic work, the downtime kind of gave me a little bit more time to go through all of the planning and figure out how to get to every state and things like that. And so it was a good, good solid year and a half of planning before we actually set foot on our first trip down to Florida where we started the tour.”
The tour kicked off in January and is scheduled to end May 28 in Virginia.
But this isn’t the original version of the show. At the suggestion of her late father, who had served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1960s, Dearth created the first production in 2010. It was a tribute to the veterans of World War II with Dearth and two other women performing in the style of the Andrews Sisters, World War II-era hitmakers of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” fame. She had guided it through several cast and content changes when she saw a video of Beckmann performing on a cruise ship.
“He was so interactive with the audience and just very personable, and he had this thing that’s very hard to find in entertainers,” she said. “You can always find good singers (and) dancers, but it’s hard to find performers that can go out into an audience and make them feel like they’re part of the show. I saw that on a video and decided to give him a shot.
“I hired him and it worked out really well. Five years later, we’re on a 50-states tour and we’re engaged.”
The first half of the show recalls the epic era of World War II when the government created the United Service Organizations (USO) to provide home-away-from-home entertainment for military personnel.
“That’s actually my favorite part of this particular show,” Beckmann said, explaining that he enjoys going out into the audience and working one-on-one with them. “I like that it kind of lives by the audience’s breath, you know, that we do get to share energy (with the audience) even more. That’s kind of the nature of theater in general, but even more than your average musical or play, you know, the audience’s participation really does kind of help to shape each individual show and make them unique.”
Following an intermission, Dearth and Beckmann shift to the music of the Vietnam War era.
“This show has always been kind of a USO show-inspired idea where it could just pop up out of a suitcase and be performed anywhere,” Beckmann said. “That’s still true on this tour but we’re traveling with a tech crew so we have a little bit more of theatricality. In Act One, Erinn and I are pretty much ourselves interacting with the audiences and there’s no fourth wall. Act Two is dedicated entirely to the music of the Vietnam era and we really do kind of walk people through more of a theatrical narrative where we do play more characters. … It’s a little bit more of a challenge and a bit more of a theatrical experience. But it creates a really dynamic evening.
“Veterans are definitely the mission,” he continued. “But it really is a show that’s for everybody. And on this tour, we’ve had a lot of people in their 40s, 30s and even young kids and teenagers who have come and had a great time.”
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“Letters From Home: The 50 State Tour”
>> Where: Paliku Theatre, Windward Community College, Kaneohe
>> When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
>> Cost: $20
>> Info: 808-235-7315 or lettersfrom homesingers.com. For tickets, go to 808ne.ws/ lettersfromhome.
>> Note: Veterans can preregister to receive free admission. Email LFH@FirstInFlightEnter tainment.com for details.
