Depending on how much Hank Williams addicts crave a fix of the po' boy's music, they'll either rise to their boot-shod feet and cheer director-playwright Randal Myler's stage tribute to the revered singer-songwriter or hold it at a distance with one hand and hold their nose with the other.

Yes, the songs in Hank Williams: Lost Highway are treated spectacularly, with one irritating exception. Jason Petty, who first played the doomed country star at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in 1996 and has the part down as pat as is humanly possible, looks enough like the man he's impersonating to fool the casual observer and sings with the same pulsating, metallic tone. Plus -- to fall into the colloqui[...]