[NEohioPAL] Review of Mercury Summer Stock's "All Shook Up"

[Bob Abelman]

Mercury Summer Stock delivers a blue suede smash-hit

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 8/10/12

 

 

Theaters have a strategy when choosing their lineup of plays for a season.  Some select shows thematically, such as Rabbit Run's summer of Charles Dickens-inspired works.  Others, like Porthouse Theatre, have opted for a summer devoted exclusively to musicals.  Mercury Summer Stock, it seems, is going for a season of extremes.

 

After opening with the highly stylized "Cats," with its T.S. Eliot pedigree, philosophical overtones and actors preening each other in the moonlight, MSS's current production is the Elvis Presley-infused "All Shook Up."  With a musical score derived from Top 40 hits from the 1950s, a delightfully superficial storyline and brash, full-throttled production values, "All Shook Up" is what "Cats" was not.

 

This jukebox musical features a motor-cycle riding, hip-swiveling roustabout named Chad who wanders into a small, comically conservative Midwestern town (there is an ordinance against tight jeans) and shakes things up.  Chad brings rock 'n roll to the locals and, by doing so, introduces love in all its incarnations and a musical number for every possible occasion at any given opportunity. 

 

Promoted as a cleverly camouflaged rendition of Shakespeare's comedy "Twelfth Night," with its employment of star-crossed lovers, mistaken sexual identity and such, Joe DiPietro's "All Shook Up" is mostly a high-energy mash-up of popular tunes and production numbers that rock the room. 

 

This musical is all about the music which, in this MSS production, is given a hard-driving beat you can dance to by an on-stage, 5-piece band under Eddie Carney's direction.  It is danced to by a phenomenal ensemble employing director Pierre-Jacques Brault's period-appropriate and very clever choreography, and is accompanied by incredible vocals by a gifted cast of featured performers.

 

These performers include Matthew Roscoe, who creates an extremely affable Chad; the absolutely adorable Dani Apple as Natalie, a young garage mechanic desperate for love; big-hearted Dan DiCello as Natalie's lonely, widowed dad; the hilarious Brian Marshall as Dennis, who adores Natalie but is too insecure to do anything about it; the delicious Dana Aber as the pheromone-secreting museum curator; Jesse Markowitz and Lauryn Alexandria Hobbs as the star-crossed lovers; Kelvette Beacham as the disheartened Sylvia; and Kathleen Caldwell and Carter Welo as the uptight mayor and her silent Sheriff.  They are wonderful, one and all.

Jukebox musicals have grown in number and popularity in recent years, and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  At one extreme of the arts and craftsmanship continuum is the 2010 Broadway hit "Come Fly Away," which came to PlayhouseSquare last May.  It is an excursion into the Frank Sinatra song book that merges Sinatra's own voice from re-mastered original recordings with a live band and is enacted through a world-class troupe of dancers performing Twyla Tharp's classic and modern choreography.  

At the other end of the spectrum is the popular "Momma Mia!," which toured through Cleveland in 2002, 2004, 2008, 2009 and again last month.  Lightweight and oh so easy to listen to, "Mamma Mia!" is set to the disco beat of Abba songs that inspire, albeit incredulously, a bright, breezy and brain-dead storyline and gimmicky staging. 

"All Shook Up" is most certainly Abba-esque, with its pre-fabricated musical score, simple story derived from song lyrics, mainstream sensibilities and the guilty, feel-good afterglow that follows after seeing a performance.  

What makes "All Shook Up" more robust and more pleasurable for those who don't typically gravitate toward this type of fare is its deliberately corny dialogue, a perpetual wink and nod at its own ridiculousness, and classic rock 'n roll source material that includes "Heartbreak Hotel," "Burning Love," and "Can't Help Falling In Love."   

What makes this MSS production such a blue suede sensation is the incredible talent on stage, the campy cardboard scenery by Janet Conley that fails to take itself seriously, and a director who has apparently mandated that everyone on both sides of the proscenium arch have a hell-of-a good time.  

They do and you will.

"All Shook Up" continues through August 18 at Regina Auditorium on the Notre Dame College campus, South Euclid.  For tickets, $15 to $18, call 216-771-5862 or visit http://mercurysummerstock.ticketleap.com.
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