Million Dollar Quartet thrives on crowd-pleasing hits
And How to Disappear Completely is an illuminating wonder
If rock ’n’ roll truly is the devil’s music, then Dec. 4, 1956 saw an all-fired gathering worthy of The Omen when Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins crossed paths in an old radiator shop-turned-recording studio.
Their impromptu jam session, under the watchful eye of legendary Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, resulted in a recording, Million Dollar Quartet, which five decades on became the basis of a Broadway smash hit musical of the same name. Advance bookings for the Segal Centre’s current production have been so healthy that it’s set to transfer to Place des Arts.
But despite one or two sequences in which the Segal’s stage seems to be bathed in lurid flames, most notably during a smouldering rendition of Fever by Sara Diamond (the sometime Habs anthem singer plays Elvis’s girlfriend), it could do with a bit more of a whiff of sulphur.
It’s unashamedly feel-good and the quartet are, for the most part, thoroughly nice guys (quite a contrast to director Lisa Rubin’s last production, the vitriolic Bad Jews, which returns here in November).
This does make for a pleasant 90 minutes of nostalgic entertainment, but somewhat douses the potential fireworks of the drama, which mostly centres on the boys’ wavering loyalty toward father figure Phillips (James Loye).
But the show’s main selling point has less to do with telling a coherent, character-driven story than with packing in as many hits as possible, including Great Balls of Fire, Hound Dog and, of course, Blue Suede Shoes, performed with bags of fizz and crowd-pleasing energy.
The imitations, for the most part, are pretty good. Sky Seals convincingly captures Cash’s bass drawl and cowpoke strut, while Edward Murphy subtly suggests Perkins’s frustration at being overshadowed by younger blood.
Depressingly, the least effective character is the one who inevitably gets the biggest buildup. Elvis may not have had a wooden heart, but he gets a pretty wooden interpretation from George Krissa, who struggles to convey the King’s louche, purring sexiness as well as his electrifying performance style.
But this weak spot, and the limitations of the script, are largely made up for by a quite astonishing performance from Christo Graham as a puckish, punkish, volatile Lewis (he reminded me of a young Tim Roth) who doesn’t so much play the piano as attack it with every — and I mean every — body part.
Wisely, the show ends with Graham and the boys giving a firecracker performance of Jerry Lee’s Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, leaving the audience with the distinct impression that the show is a whole lot more exciting than it perhaps really is.
While Itai Erdal’s lighting design adds to the dynamism of Million Dollar Quartet, Erdal himself is performing in Segal’s Studio
space with The Chop Theatre’s one-man show How to Disappear Completely.
It’s a charming, surprisingly funny piece, beautifully directed by James Long, which manages to bring together Erdal’s passion for stage lighting and his reminiscences about the death of his mother, Mery, in Israel around the turn of the millennium.
At the time, the Vancouverbased Erdal was an aspiring filmmaker. At his mother’s urging, he travelled to Israel with a film camera, the idea being to chronicle her passage into the darkness. But the project was abandoned for reasons revealed toward the end of the show.
Erdal, who never trained as an actor, is absolutely mesmerizing, whether offering a fascinating master class in stage lighting (he mostly operates the lights himself with the aid of a portable control panel), interacting with projected footage of his mother, or going off on entertaining digressions about secret raves, world capitals and frisky manatees.
As you would expect, it looks gorgeous, with different lighting effects serving as luminous yet casually delivered metaphors for mortality and the fleeting raptures of life. Highly recommended.