A look of love at Dusty Springfield's life

For a long time, actress Susann Fletcher knew Dusty Springfield as the singer with the towering blond bouffant who purred such hits as ''I Only Want to Be With You" and ''The Look of Love." But that was where her knowledge of the Brit-pop diva abruptly ended. In Fletcher's mind, Springfield was no different from '60s songbirds like Petula Clark and Lesley Gore.

''She just didn't hit my radar screen," Fletcher says.

Four years ago, though, that changed. Channel surfing at 3 a.m. in her hotel room after a performance of ''Annie Get Your Gun," Fletcher drowsily stumbled on a television biography of Springfield.

''I thought 'Dusty Springfield, oh, yeah, I sort of remember her.' And then by the end of the hour, my nose was pressed against the TV screen," Fletcher recalls by phone from her home in New Jersey. ''What an amazing woman on every level. I don't know how I missed her."

That chance encounter on late-night TV led to the creation of Fletcher's musical ''A Girl Called Dusty," which opened in its world premiere at the Provincetown Theater yesterday. It was the beginning of Fletcher's fascination with Springfield's legacy, which is as colorful as the late singer's famous powder-blue eye shadow and pink lipstick. For rabid Springfield fans, the singer's turbulent and envelope-pushing history is well known: She introduced the Motown sound to England, she was one of the first artists to refuse to play to segregated audiences in South Africa, and, in a brave move for the times, she came out of the closet as bisexual in a 1970 interview. All of those factors made Fletcher, a veteran actress of Broadway and touring musicals, enamored of Springfield. But it was the singer's cool, breathy voice that brought about a full-on obsession.

''She's stealth brilliant," Fletcher says. ''You can listen to one of her songs and say, 'Oh, that's really lovely.' But the more you listen, the more you realize what an incredible artist she was."

Not long afterward, Fletcher found herself on a particularly long drive listening to a Springfield compilation CD, and she was stunned to hear a song called ''I've Been Wrong Before" sandwiched amid the bubble gum of ''Wishin' and Hopin' " and ''Stay a While." She found the somber ballad so visionary that she pulled off the road to check the CD's liner notes to make sure it was in chronological order.

''That's the beginning of our relationship," she says of the singer, who died of breast cancer in 1999. ''I kid with my friends and tell them that I've been having a relationship with a dead woman for the past three years, and there's really not any room for anybody who's alive. It's all right, except she's really not available."

While she jokes about it, there's some truth here. For the first year, as she worked on writing the show, Fletcher listened to nothing but Springfield's music. ''A Girl Called Dusty" was originally a one-woman cabaret show with dialogue between songs. But after performing it that way just four times, Fletcher felt a larger cast was needed to tell Springfield's story more effectively. The one-woman show grew to 35 characters, all portrayed by a cast of six actors.

But first, Fletcher came to the heart-wrenching realization that it would be impossible for her to both star as Springfield and write a musical as a first-time playwright. To fill the role, she called in friend and former castmate Stacia Fernandez.

''I think it was difficult for Susann to give up the role," Fernandez says. ''She wrote it for herself, and it's a great part."

Physically, the blond, willowy Fernandez is a better fit for the role. And when she's persuaded to sing a few bars of Springfield's 1969 hit ''Son of a Preacher Man" over the phone, the resemblance to Springfield's voice is chilling. Both Fletcher and Fernandez are quick to point out, however, that ''A Girl Called Dusty" is not an impersonation of Springfield (''You should go to a drag show for that," Fernandez says), but a representation of Springfield's life. It's a story that's told through drama and songs spanning Springfield's 30-plus year career.

The action of the musical is propelled by a conflict that exists within Springfield herself. Born Mary O'Brien, she was encouraged by her brother to enter the music business. Never entirely comfortable with public life, she created the Dusty Springfield persona for pop radio and the concert stage. The two leads in Fletcher's show are Dusty Springfield, aging from 24 to 59, and Mary O'Brien, who is never older than 15. The two regularly interact onstage, with Mary serving as both the conscience and the tormentor to her older self.

''To understand Dusty, you really need to know who Mary was," explains director Evan Bergman. ''Mary O'Brien was a middle-class girl who listened to jazz and a lot of other kinds of music that weren't really what Dusty became. . . . She could never reconcile her success with who she was. What you're seeing onstage is that conflict. It's a fully realized portrait of a very complicated and very talented individual."

Creating that portrait became Fletcher's mission. Though she was initially overwhelmed by the expectations of Dusty fanatics, she realized her vision after an oddly inspirational visit to Henley-on-Thames, where the singer spent her final years.

''When I was over at Dusty Day [the annual English gathering commemorating Springfield's life], I ran into a couple of guys who live in the States and had seen my cabaret show," Fletcher says. ''I asked them what they thought of it, and they said, 'Dusty never would've worn those shoes.' Right at that moment, I realized that this is a group that I couldn't please, because they want something that doesn't exist; they want Dusty alive. It was invaluable. After that, I just concentrated on trying to tell the story."

"A Girl Called Dusty" runs through July 24 at the Provincetown Theater. Tickets $31-$36. 508-487-7487, www.ptowntheater.org.

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.