‘Dream come true’
Jonah Anderson presents ‘An Evening with Elvis’ tonight at the Kings Playhouse in Georgetown
Jonah Anderson is an up-andcoming P.E.I. playwright.
The Five Houses native has penned almost 30 plays and dinner theatre scripts for the Kings Playhouse and St. Peter’s Courthouse Theatre over the past decade.
His recent titles include the “Dot and Ada” series, “Christmas in Killarney”, “Christmas Mayhem”, “The Banks and The Booze” and “The Halloween Xperience”.
Anderson has also directed and performed plays at both venues. One of his most favourite roles was Adolpho in “The Drowsy Chaperone” in Georgetown in 2014.
While he enjoys performing plays, always in the back of his mind, he had a dream.
Anderson longed to perform an Elvis tribute, he tells me. You know, the kind of musical evening where all the stops are pulled out as the artist transports you into the King’s living room.
Anderson’s dream is coming true today.
“I’m so excited. I can’t wait,” says the Five Houses native who will present “An Evening with Elvis” at 7:30 p.m. at the Kings Playhouse in Georgetown.
Nolan Compton, a local country singer, will open the show for him.
Then Anderson and the Blue Suede Band will take over the stage. The group consists of Robert Graham, Bobby MacIsaac, Adam MacGregor and Alicia and Shawn Arsenault.
“We’re performing 20 hits. We’ll start with the ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ theme song and then go right into ‘See See. Rider’.”
At intermission, there will be a sale of head shots of Anderson as Elvis. All the money raised will go to the Canadian Mental Health Association, P.E.I. division.
“Then we’ll come back to the stage and perform more songs. Elvis never did an encore, but I want to,” says Anderson, his eyes sparkling in excitement about tonight.
The performer was first bitten by the Elvis bug in junior high after receiving a ghetto blaster and a collection of Elvis tapes one Christmas from Santa.
After ripping open the paper, he remembers popping one of the tapes into the player and becoming
inspired as he heard Elvis sing.
“Every song was just so good. And he seemed to sing so effortlessly,” says Anderson, who spent his holidays learning all of the King’s hits.
Later when he and his brother sang “Don’t Be Cruel” on their cousin’s karaoke machine, everyone noticed Anderson could hit the low notes perfectly.
That’s when he discovered that he had the same voice range as Elvis.
“That’s where things really started.”
In 2009, his dream took a step closer to being realized when he noticed an opening for an Elvisinspired Pharaoh in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, while he was a theatre student at St. Lawrence College in Brockville, Ont.
“I worked with my vocal coach for a year to prepare for the audition and I got the role.”
After the show, people were constantly coming up to him telling him how much he sounded like Elvis.
When he returned to P.E.I., he looked for opportunities to perform.
Once, he presented a night of theatre at the Kings Playhouse, but the play wasn’t long enough, so he did a set of Elvis songs with another performer.
Another time, he brought his Elvis show to a private party.
Anderson hopes that tonight’s performance is the first of many more Elvis shows to come.
“I have a videographer coming in to tape this. And I’m making an audition tape to send to some cruise ships who are looking for an Elvis performer for their shows.”