Million Dollar Quartet
(Million Dollar Quartet Website)
At
The Goodman Theatre In The Owen
(Goodman Theatre Website)
170 N. Dearborn Street
Chicago, Illinois 60601
312.443.3800

September 26 – October 26

Dee Gee Theatricals, John Cossette Productions,
Northern Lights, Inc.

Starring:
Eddie Clendening, Levi Kreis, Lance Guest, Robert Lyons,
Kelly Lamont, Brian McCaskill, Billy Shaffer, Chuck Zayas

Direction: Floyd Mutrux & Eric Schaeffer
Musical Arrangements and Supervision: Chuck Mead

Scenic Design: Adam Koch
Costume Design: Caryn Klein
Lighting Design: Keith Parham
Sound Design: Kai Harada
Casting: Claire Simon, CSA
Production Stage Manager: Maggie O’Donnell
Production Management: Matt Marsden
Press Representation and Marketing: Carol Fox & Associates
General Management: Alan Wasser, Allan Williams, Karen Leahy

Susan Weinrebe
October 5, 2008

For nearly two hours the Million Dollar Quartet shook the Owen Theatre as the spirits of four rock and roll legends jammed again.

The place was Sun Records, the country impresario was Sam Phillips, and the immortals who played together, a group made in rock and roll heaven, were Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley. The day, close to Christmas in 1956, brought the four of them to the Sun studio for a once-in-a-lifetime session that was secretly recorded. Million Dollar Quartet recreates the time, the place and the music on that day.

Performing the roles of the quartet, the actors are foremost, musicians, and their interpretations of the originals lie somewhere between impression and impersonation. Cast for being able to carry the musicality of the show, their particular physical similarities and even timbre of voice reverberate as well, especially as with Lance Guest, in the role of Johnny Cash.

Eddie Clendening, in the role of Elvis Presley, seemed young and still finding his way. Very respectful in his demeanor towards Sam Phillips, the man who gave him his start, and deferential to the guidance of his thereafter Svengali, Colonel Parker, Clendening played the King as an idol in the making. Kelly Lamont, Elvis’s girlfriend, Dyanne, styled a solo of “Fever” that created a slow burn. As a feminine counterpoint to the testosterone powered shenanigans of Perkins and Lewis, she ably bridged scenes and songs.

Rob Lyons, lean and lanky, in the role of Carl Perkins, father of Rockabilly style, let his songs rip with a strut and thrusting, two-movement step, looking like an ole country boy at a clog dance, or like Chuck Berry at his most funky. Like the others, born into the poorest of Southern poverty, music, learned almost by osmosis, from old, black musicians, was a way up for him. That made his heartbreak all the more poignant, when he remembered how his own composition, “Blue Suede Shoes”, had been given to Elvis to perform on the Ed Sullivan show, because Perkins, injured in a car accident, couldn’t go on. Lyons supplied the musical and acting electricity that kept many scenes moving forward.

Levi Kreis, in the role of Jerry Lee Lewis, used every part of his body, from flaring nostrils and cock-of-the-walk stance, to wild man piano glissandos, to flavor the wild man antic performance of the Killer. He pounded the keys with hatchet chops and kicked his piano bench out of the way to better attack his instrument – sitting on top of the piano and keyboarding backwards! But that is what the actually Killer did, and more! As his mother had prophesied, he was bound for success, and Kries’s performance, as the only rocker left in the Sun lineup, was thrilling. During his all-out-attack in his scenes and of course at the piano, he brought down the house, each time he was unleashed.

Many musicals are loosely spun together by gossamer plots. There was no need for thin plotting in Million Dollar Quartet, since it was “only” a recording session, but references to the poverty of the musicians’ backgrounds, old timey religion, their debt to black musicians, and their first breaks with Sam Phillips, were all woven in between the big songs, that each of the performers popularized. It was also the story of show business, where one is only as good as his latest hit. As Phillips said, “You made the music, but I made you.” In the end, though, their time at Sun Records played out, the session came to an end, and they moved on.

With an archival projection of a photo taken of Cash, Lewis, Perkins and Presley, grouped around the piano, the actors recreated the pose and sealed the night’s great fun with “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’” as their encore. The mood should have been left at that. Instead, Phillips returned to stage to announce, “Elvis has left the building.” My wish for this and other productions is to resist the urge to throw out a line for gratuitous effect. Nothing could have spoiled the rollicking stagery of Million Dollar Quartet, but this was an unnecessary cap on performances that had already been sealed.

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For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net