By Marcia Blondin***Jamie Brickhouse has once again burrowed under our skin with tales of his Texas upbringing. This season, we were treated to I Favor My Daddy; a Tale of Two Sissies, all about his father, Earl, whom Jamiesuspected was gay. Last year, when Brickhouse was unleashed in Vallarta, we met h
is mother, Mama Jean, with all her foibles. Nobody gets out of childhood unscarred; it is everyone’s right of passage, but, oh, what a different world we would live in if Jamie would write our childhood stories for us. If we could just give him the info and sit back, letting him run with it, we would gain a great deal of perspective.
Brickhouse is a fine writer, able to pick a moment in time, pull it out of the past, and hold it out in front of you to try on like a silken dressing gown to see if it fits. An extraordinarily talented actor to perform an hour+ monologue, never stumbling on his way, and pulling his audience in steadily, with every inflection, straight into his heart.
If you take a handful of local Puerto Vallarta entertainers, put them together into a workshop for five days with a
Broadway songwriter, composer and author of seven books on metaphysics, with unknown songs to learn, plus their regular gigs on various stages around town, what happens? A spectacularly sweet 90-minute concert pops up at the Palm Cabaret, that’s what!
The Bella Vox Performing Arts Foundation, headed by David Sabella, invited David Friedman to come to Vallarta and do a workshop with a few handpicked singers and then do a concert to end the 2025-26 season for Bella Vox. While Friedman might well be legendary on the Eastern seaboard, this is Puerto Vallarta. We are an emerging Broadway/Cabaret community, so most of the cast members, and ditto for the audience, didn’t know who the hell he was.
We know him now. And love him, I might add. Friedman’s accomplishments, if piled one atop the other, would reach the stars, and you can entertain yourselves by reading up on him if you are inclined to take a few days out of your life to immerse yourself in his. What was given to us in the early 
evening at The Palm was a glimpse into the life of an uber- gifted artist, but what settled on us like a warm embrace was his humility and humanity. His lifelong search for love, like the rest of us, led him to Shawn Moninger, who shared some of his story and a song with us. I leaned over to Georgia Darehshori and whispered, ”Him, I have to hug.” And I did after the show.
I was so proud of Vallarta’s singers; a couple of them really struggled during the five-day workshop, but their performances across the board were lovely. David Friedman wears a lot of artistic hats, but his most important job is being a healer. Perhaps his most important composition, sung by David Sabella with the students behind him as the choir, Friedman on the piano, ”We Can Be Kind” closed the show with a thunderous standing ovation.
Photos by Marcia Blondin
