“Ellis does the heavy comic lifting… funny, broad and bawdy humor in classic Carol Burnett fashion”

Certainly, Riverside’s production amplifies the music and the humor. Directed with energy and invention by DJ Salisbury, Honky Tonk Angels turns into a lively showcase of three wonderful performers — Bailey Purvis, Kylan Ritchie and Natalie Charlé Ellis, who does the heavy comic lifting here. Add to that a country band led by Broadway music director Brent-Alan Huffman and all those Bubbas and Daisy Maes hidden in your American heart will land in hog heaven.

The show opens with a beautiful, harmonic “I’ll Fly Away,” then lights come up and you see three homes. There is the Waxahachie, Tex. double-wide trailer of Angela Bodine (Ellis), the mother to a couple of hellions and wife of Bubba, a truck-driver who’d rather go to a tractor pull than go out for dinner with his wife. A Broadway performer (original cast member of Beetlejuice and School of Rock) Ellis has such a strong voice that she can keep tune while serving up some very funny, broad and bawdy humor in classic Carol Burnett fashion. What’s especially appealing about her performance is how she lets the audience in on the jokes, like when she purposely sprays starch on her husband’s jock strap or lets the iron burn his shirt while sarcastically singing “Stand By Your Man.” But nothing can top her yelling at her kids to “put it down” because “the chainsaw is daddy’s toy!”

—Bill Hirschman, Florida Theater On Stage