Million Dollar Quartet at ISF

Or: Whole Lot of Shaking

We are caught up in the get go in the wild orbit of Sam Philips (James Ludwig), proprietor of Sun Records. It is December 4th, 1956. Rock and Roll, in the minds of the movers and shakers of American music, stands balanced on a precipice; it can either take flight or nosedive into oblivion. Sam has an absolute faith in this wild new form of music that makes the kids so wild. Like an angry Garrison Keillor, the dynamo behind a two-man recording studio in Memphis, bounds about both in a desire to capture our attention, and lure/keep/promote four headliners of varying degrees of fame: Carl Perkins(Kurt Jenkins), Johnny Cash (Sky Seals*), Elvis Presley (Sean Michael Buckley), and a frenetic newcomer called Jerry Lee Lewis (Gabe Aronson).

The story (Sam trying to win back Elvis from RKO Records and keep Johnny from signing with Columbia, while the established Carl and the rising Jerry Lee cast cock-eyes at each other) is a decent enough metal, but serves merely as mounting for the glittering jewels of the songs and sounds of the four musicians. Because half the joy of Million Dollar Quartet is sitting in the midst of an audience who's vast majority were the kids drunk of the syncopation of Rock and Roll, the unseen host that floated Sam and his boys to the status of legends. To hear seven hundred seventy year olds scream with all the ecstasy they did when they were seventeen is a magical, and infectious, experience.

The other half of a joy in the movie is seeing the troubadours alive and in the flesh. I am given to understand there is a secret cabal of Million Dollar Quartet Actors across the country (House Elvis, House Cash, etc) who step into the rolls anytime and anywhere the show is produced. And the actors sure earn their keep: not only in look and manner but dead on impersonation of their voice and musical gifts. Jenkins rockabilly twang is backed by his industrious shredding of the electric guitar. Buckley nails the King’s crooning, and Seals the haunted graveness of Cash. And Aronson gives us the full Jerry Lee, ripping across the keys with hands and feet, banging away at every conceivable angle.

The play prefers to create its own drama (Philips’s Death of a Salesman-like hope to preserve both his success and his autonomy) than nose at the more unfortunate factors of its players lives, both lingering behind them and coming around the pike. Chuck Berry gets an epitaph of gratitude after a hop’n rendition of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” before being buried again. Most curious is Dyanne (Kristin Beth Williams), a New York singer who’s perched on Elvis’s arm this season. Possessed of a handsome, bronze bright voice, Williams gives us a rattling kick with “Fever” (Where she has a great deal of fun with Carl’s brother Jay (Jonathan Brown) a game bassist) and “I hear Ya Knockin’” but is principally there to act as a Christmas Angel, gently bestowing peace and good will amongst the fractions party.

But as fun a greatest hits jukebox Musical as Million Dollar is when the humors of the musicians (and a little electric shock from Dyanne) meld together in a alloy of styles: in the contentious Blue Suede Shoes at the top of the hour, to the meld of Rock’n Robin and I shall Not Be Moved. Most movingly however, to my own mind, is a piece that sheds trappings: Sam invites Johnny to indulge his sweet tooth for Gospel music and joins the other three musicians into a simple piece of Down By the River Side, where each of these southern boys joins in on a favored and familiar tune, as easy as we might whistle one of theirs today.

* Contender for the Aven Tavishel Nifty Name Award 2019.