There's a love affair with Patsy Cline going on at Manoa Valley Theatre. The sentimental, essentially one-woman marathon of hit songs is playing under the title of "Always . . . Patsy Cline," the closing she appended to her letters.

The show's narrative line is written by Ted Swindley, taken from an incident in which an adoring fan, Louise Seger, met Patsy at one of her concerts and invited her home for bacon, eggs, and girl talk. The two bonded and a friendship and correspondence began, ending with the singer's death in a plane crash at age 30.

As biography, the narrative has more to say about Seger than it does about Cline. From a worshipping fan's point of view, Cline was a "good ole country gal" with a small child and a sometimes rocky marriage. But the theater piece isn't intended to be a life story, simply an opportunity to string together a couple of dozen songs.

So the character — or more appropriately, the persona — arises from the music. And the performance — again, more appropriately, the impersonation — is in delivering the songs.

To do this, MVT has a veteran at the helm. Zenia Zambrano Moura takes the lead, as she did in MVT's 2002 production of "A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline" - another essentially one-woman show consisting of a couple of dozen songs associated with the country singing star.

The measure of Moura's success is her ability to center on Cline's idiosyncratic singing style. Moura has obviously studied it closely and successfully captures its essence. But, if memory serves, the current performance has softened at the edges since 2002.

In that version — especially on the opening night of the run — Moura's approach was more studied and deliberate, attacking the notes with calculation and replicating the yodel quality, baroque musical curlicues, and decorative touches with which Cline embellished country music.

The flavor is still there in this performance, but considerably mellowed out. Moura makes the difficult note progression in "I Fall to Pieces" flow like it was second nature and as natural as speaking. The song starts out in the basement of her vocal range, leaps almost immediately to the roof and overlays the melody with gingerbread trim.

Moura also neatly demonstrates Cline's crossover skill from country to pop and her way with spirituals ("A Closer Walk with Thee"), jazz ("Bill Bailey"), and rafter-shaking belting ("Shake Rattle And Roll.")

Appearing in and around the songs is Suzanne Green as the tirelessly, and doggedly perky, country music fan, Louise Seger. Wired like a hyperactive terrier, Seger leads the applause, directs the sing-alongs, and spreads on the down-home spontaneous charm while Moura makes her costume changes.

Green doesn't have much dialogue to work with, so she plays emotion and joins Moura for a duet on "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Thankfully, Cline asks her to curb her enthusiasm for conducting the band and finally take a seat.

The friendship connection plays increasingly forced as the story line and that inevitable plane crash bring down the mood. But there are two up-tempo spontaneous curtain calls — both listed in the program — to send the audience home considerably cheered up.

Kenji Hagashihama leads the country music band and Dusty Behner's costumes nicely follow Cline's career from cowgirl outfits sewn by her mother to the sequined gowns that set the style for country singers who — up until Cline — used to wear calico.

Moura's performance is best at creating genuine warmth. That, and songs like "Crazy" and "Walkin' After Midnight," carry the evening.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.