Review: With Re-energized Elvis Musical, Reagle Music Theatre Of Greater Boston is ALL SHOOK UP

For decades now, TV movies and feature films have been made about Elvis Presley, but stage shows about the King of Rock ‘n Roll, or built on his amazing musical catalogue, have been fewer and further between.

So far only two have made it to Broadway – 2010’s “Million Dollar Quartet,” a musical about a 1956 Sun records session that brought together Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and 2005’s “All Shook Up,” which doesn’t depict Elvis but uses his hits to tell a story loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

The latter – which incorporates themes of homosexuality and segregation – had only middling success on Broadway before embarking on a U.S. tour that brought it to Boston’s Citizens Opera House in the fall of 2006. Even with the Presley score, and Susan Anton top-lining as bombshell businesswoman Miss Sandra that production never managed to be anything but sluggish.

Now the jukebox musical is being given a fresh and lively reimagining in a terrific new production at Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston through July 21 at the Robinson Theatre in Waltham.

Director Arthur Gomez smoothly moves the 20-plus-member company through the various stages of the humorous, heartfelt book by Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro (“Memphis,” “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”)  Gomez clearly knows both the material and the players well, and blends them impressively to give the show a much-needed reinvigoration.

Fueled by no fewer than 25 Elvis songs, the story follows Natalie Haller (a winning Gwynne Wood), a young mechanic with a big heart, and Chad (an eminently likeable Christopher Lewis), a hip-swiveling roustabout from out-of-town who shakes things up for the regulars at Sylvia's Honky-Tonk, run by its namesake Sylvia (the abundantly appealing Carolyn Saxon), in a small, rural 1950s town.

Well orchestrated by music director Mindy Cimini, the unforgettable Elvis songs are shown off to full advantage by Wood – solo on “One Night With You” and in a sweetly affecting duet with the terrific, warm-voiced Jackson Jirard on “Love Me Tender” – by and Lewis (solo on “Jailhouse Rock” and “I Don’t Want To,” and in a duet with the affable Jean-Alfred Chavier as Jim on “Don’t Be Cruel.”)

Some of the production’s other memorable musical moments are provided by Saxon (“There’s Always Me”) and Tader Shipley (“Let Yourself Go”) as Miss Sandra. The cast’s rich vocals are complemented by Larry Sousa’s high-energy choreography, especially evident on the all-company numbers including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Burning Love,” and “All Shook Up.”

The acting is first-rate, too, with touching scene work by Wood, whose yearning for Chad leads her to disguise herself as a man, Ed, to get closer to him. Chad’s realization that his love for Natalie/Ed is not bound by gender is one of the show’s most emotionally moving storylines.

There are delightful comic turns, too, especially by the hilarious Janis Hudson – evoking Jackie Hoffman and garbed like a character out of TV’s “Mama’s Family” – as Mayor Matilda Hyde, and James Turner III as the equally quirky Sheriff Earl.

So, while a new Elvis-themed musical “Elvis: A Musical Revolution,” which played North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly last fall, is now making the rounds at regional theaters, Reagle’s terrific production of “All Shook Up” is bringing the King’s heat and musical beat to Waltham this month.

Photo caption: Jackson Jirard, Tader Shipley, and Chrstopher Lewis in a scene from the Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston production of “All Shook Up.” Photo by Robert Pascucci.

To post a comment, you must register and login.