By LINDA CHION KENNEY
Both a force of nature and a force of habit brings Mollie Anderson to the stage, first as a school-aged performer and now as a seasoned performer with decades worth of experience and credits to her name.
A Riverview resident, Anderson is a community theater mainstay, back on stage in February for the first time since the death of her beloved father, Robert Lee Copeland, at age 86. The accomplished and lifelong musician, known professionally as Bobby Lee, and affectionately as “Daddio” and “Granddaddy,” died July 29, 2023.
Mollie Anderson, seated on the couch, with the cast of Farce of Habit on the Plant City Entertainment stage
Mollie Anderson, with her husband, Billy, and her father, Robert Lee Copeland, also known as “Daddio”
This month Anderson returns to the stage in Farce of Nature and in February played the title role in Always . . . Patsy Cline, the heartfelt musical revue of the iconic and pioneering country artist, who died in a plane crash in 1963 at age 30. Cline’s famed hits include “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces.”
“Having to become Patsy Cline, to sing 26 songs per night, that was quite a challenge,” Anderson said, of the Plant City Entertainment production. “It required me to perform in the play on the Grand Ole Opry stage, which is what my dad, a guitarist, did in real life, for eight to 10 years in the 1980s.”
Anderson next is set to perform April 25-27 and May 2-4 in Farce of Habit, billed as “an absurdly funny Southern-fried romp that takes us back to the Reel ‘Em Inn, the finest little fishing lodge in the Ozarks.” Presented as a sequel to Farce of Nature, which Plant City Entertainment previously performed, both comedies were written by playwrights Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jaime Wooten.
Robert Lee Copeland, who went by the stage name “Bobby Lee,” died July 29, 2023, at the age of 86.
Anderson reprises her role as the caffeine-addicted Wanelle Wiburn, “a determined ball of fire,” who owns the Reel ‘Em Inn with her husband, D.Gene Wilburn, played by Steven Preuss.
The director is Kelley Gustafson, a long-time community theater performer, who worked professionally as well. Set in a fishing camp in the Ozarks, where “lots of zany things happen,” her latest show features, as Gustafson put it, a gaggle of nuns living in a barn; a character who can’t stop doing community theater, always dressing in crazy costumes; an ax murderer on the loose; a stalker ex-wife; and a ‘podcast person,’ stuck in a backwoods place, hiding a full of himself movie star.
Indeed, this is light-hearted fare for tough-minded times.
“I believe right now that the world needs to laugh and not take things so seriously,” at least for the time they sit in their theater seats, Gustafson said. “People can escape for a couple of hours laughing at these zany characters and maybe seeing something of themselves in these characters as well.”
Anderson issued a similar sentiment, “I absolutely love making comedies, and to hear laughter in the audience is a rush. Taking people away from everyday life, for a night taking them away from it all, that is so much fun to do.”
The farce for Anderson cements her return to the community theater stage, which, in 2023, she left after her final performance in the role once filled by Dolly Parton in the musical comedy, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
It was the night before her final performance as the character Mona Stangley, that Anderson, her father’s main caretaker, came home from a show to learn that her father had died. “My son and my daughter-in-law said that he finally let go that night so they could see the play,” Anderson said. “He knew they would not leave his side. They were holding his hand when he passed.”
Performing in the next day’s matinee was her toughest role to date, Anderson said, and she did so lovingly in honor of her father, the guitarist who played for almost nine decades, who mentored many and who brought the joy of music and performance into her life at a young age.
“I sang my first solo in the fifth grade,” Anderson said. “I sang, ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ at the PTA meeting.”
For those who mourn, Anderson said it’s best to “focus on all the good memories,” which is hard to do at first. “But try to focus on every good memory, and try to do what they would want you to do,” she added. “My dad would not want me to be miserable the rest of my life missing him. And he would want me to go on doing plays and to keep singing and to continue being the worship leader at church.”
Mollie Anderson, left, as Patsy Cline, with Lois Green, in the role of Cline’s friend, Louise Seger
And so she does, in tribute to her father, at the New Day Church in Brandon, and on the community stage this month in Plant City.
Cast with Anderson in Farce of Habit are Steven Preuss (D.Gene Wilburn), Se’a Ryan (Maxie Wilburn Suggs), Vince Evangelista (Jock McNair), Kristen Permenter (Jenna Wilburn), Coy Permenter (Ty Wilburn), Joshua Mange (Huddle Fisk), Leah Palmerio (Sister Myrtle Agnes) and Elizabeth Malone (Barbra Stratton).
For more on show times and tickets, visit www.PlantCityEntertainment.com/. The Plant City Theatre is at 101 North Thomas St., Plant City. Call 813-752-0728.