The Arts at Marble Arch, London
Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1956 get-together is respun with an unsubtle script but some vigorous performances
With the Arts theatre currently closed for major works, it has established a larger base next to Marble Arch. This temporary new home is now given over to some golden oldies with a jukebox musical combining the stories of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. It is almost 70 years since they wound up together one December afternoon at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis and recorded 40-odd songs. “Million dollar quartet” ran the caption that accompanied their picture in the newspaper.
Did this impromptu supergroup share vocals on Blue Suede Shoes and did Cash and Perkins mash up My Babe and Sixteen Tons as they do here? All the evidence suggests not. They chiefly laid down gospel and spiritual numbers amid some breezy chatter kept on the recordings. Two of those, Down By the Riverside and Peace in the Valley, are kept from the original session – along with Chuck Berry’s Brown Eyed Handsome Man – in a show that uses the occasion to rotate instead through some of their greatest hits including Great Balls of Fire, which wouldn’t be recorded at Sun for another year. Even Libby Watson’s design, which turns the modest studios into a sort of checkerboard-floored rock’n’roll diner cum fairground, has a colourful arch resembling a retro jukebox.
