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With the Arts theatre currently closed for major works, it has established a larger base next to Marble Arch. This temporary new home is now given over to some golden oldies with a jukebox musical combining the stories of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. It is almost 70 years since they wound up together one December afternoon at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis and recorded 40-odd songs. “Million dollar quartet” ran the caption that accompanied their picture in the newspaper.
Did this impromptu supergroup share vocals on Blue Suede Shoes and did Cash and Perkins mash up My Babe and Sixteen Tons as they do here? All the evidence suggests not. They chiefly laid down gospel and spiritual numbers amid some breezy chatter kept on the recordings. Two of those, Down By the Riverside and Peace in the Valley, are kept from the original session – along with Chuck Berry’s Brown Eyed Handsome Man – in a show that uses the occasion to rotate instead through some of their greatest hits including Great Balls of Fire, which wouldn’t be recorded at Sun for another year. Even Libby Watson’s design, which turns the modest studios into a sort of checkerboard-floored rock’n’roll diner cum fairground, has a colourful arch resembling a retro jukebox.
The musical – first staged in 2006 and seen in the West End in 2011, now newly transferred from Cirencester’s Barn theatre – is a curious mix of wildly fanciful and diligently factual. Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux’s book has some laidback charm and humour but the characters often awkwardly trot out their own and each other’s backstories. Phillips (Darren Day) hosts the evening, adding extra exposition. It can feel like a series of potted histories. Occasionally a song matches the men’s conversation, as when their shared family bereavements inspire Peace in the Valley. Other songs may carry their own stories of danger and passion but the only drama bubbling in the script is Phillips’ proteges being poached by bigger record labels and some rivalry between the foursome. It’s not exactly Stereophonic.
And yet … Jonathan O’Boyle’s production has four actor-musicians so charismatic and combative as these cocky young guns, each playing and singing with such vigour, that the well-worn tunes hit you afresh. Connor Payne’s luxuriously quiffed Presley, Christopher Erasmus’s brooding Cash, Joe Bence’s cockamamie Lewis and Joey Bradick’s driven Perkins are not imitations and instead retain an essence of each musician. Along with drummer Josh Haberfield and double bassist Geraint Downing, they rip through it with an assurance that is irresistible. And in this testosterone-filled studio, Presley’s girlfriend – here called Dyanne – blows them all away with her rendition of Fever then does it again with I Hear You Knocking. Who cares if that really happened either, you may ask, when Jenay Naima owns the room this well.
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At the Arts at Marble Arch, London, until 6 December. Then touring until 17 July
