Review: Million-Dollar Quartet, Arts at Marble Arch

In 2021 the Marble Arch Mound promised ecologists a treat; a rising pyramid to rewilding. Sadly, it’s theatre’s turn for a similar disappointment. The Arts at Marble Arch looks from the outside like a data centre and inside like an egg carton, with excessive strip lighting and inadequate seating in the bar area/holding pen. A stage planted flat on the floor and jarring silver roofbeams augment the sensation of being rushed through a detainment tent at a contentious border crossing. But at least a good jukebox musical about a momentous time in rock and roll history will save a rather uninspiring shell? Weeell…

It’s 1956 and Sun Records, manned and maintained by the dynamic Sam Phillips (Darren Day), is desperately trying to hold on to the stars he helped build. Elvis Presley (Connor Payne) has already been sold to keep the lights on, Johnny Cash (Christopher Erasmus) has itchy feet, newcomer Jerry Lee Lewis (Joe Bence) is just starting out and Carl Perkins (Joey Bradick) is bitter over his treatment and Elvis’s cover of his hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.

This collision of talent was unique, with a newspaper photo immediately captioning them the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’. The spiritual and country music actually recorded is here swapped for each respective singer’s (sometimes still to come) hits, and the recording room (former radiator repair shop) rattles with guitars, egos and various degrees of effective Southern accent.

Leading the characterisation vanguard, Erasmus’s Cash is brooding, his rumbling vocals on ‘I Walk the Line’ and the odd mix of religious earnestness and fame hunger captured faithfully. Bence as Lewis is almost tiring to watch with his frantic piano playing, comic relief and bouncing stage presence; it’s like it’s his first and only time doing the show as he fairly vibrates off the stage. Payne as Elvis has the voice but none of the oozing sexuality and struggles with the cadence, and Bradick as Perkins is a phenomenal electric guitar player and singer but again loses the Tennessee tongue. Day as lead and narrator tries his best to soften the 50s record man swagger but ends up cartoonish and simply sketched.

Taken as ‘just another jukebox musical’ the show might be considered inoffensive: a tribute act with aspirations of being a play, but I would argue its omissions create something more insidious. All four singers (to varying degrees) benefitted (commercially) from the segregation of Black and white people in America at the time, rebranding blues and gospel and making it consumable for white audiences. Not only is that touched upon just once in the show, but the political and social reality of the 1950s Jim Crow South goes utterly unmentioned. Furthermore, a fictitious character called Dyanne (a musical gift from Jenay Naima) is brought in to diversify the ensemble. Normally I would be all for this, but there is no record of Elvis dating a black woman, and his real girlfriend (who was present), Marilyn Evans, was white. Casting a woman of colour without addressing the racial complexity of some of the stars’ legacies is, I think, ill-informed and a worrying case of historical amnesia. This is such a missed opportunity, as the genre’s eventual effect on desegregation and the mixing of crowds throughout the 50s is also left untouched.

But maybe I’m taking it too hard. If you lived through or loved rock and roll, this might be just the musical for you. In fact, a couple jiving in the concert-like curtain call was one of my highlights. However, the evening is ultimately a superficial and transient look at a period of great musical creativity and social disparity.

Directed by Jonathan O’Boyle
Written by Book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, with original concept and direction by Floyd Mutrux
Movement direction by Joanna Goodwin
Set and costume design by Libby Watson
Lighting design by Alex Musgrave
Sound design by Nick Lodge
Music supervision by Lee Freeman
Produced by Barn Theatre in association with TRW Production Ltd.

Million Dollar Quartet plays at The Arts at Marble Arch until Sunday 6 December.