“What does rock’n’roll mean?”
At first glance, there’s little that can be said about Million Dollar Quartet really. It is not a show I would normally ever have thought of going to see, the music not being of my era or a genre that I know much about. But when a ticket was wafted in front of me combined with the knowledge that the show is closing mid-January, I thought ‘what the hey’ and trundled along to the Noël Coward Theatre for the evening. What was most surprising about was that I really rather enjoyed myself.
The show is based around the real life meeting of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins (have to admit I hadn’t heard of Perkins) on 4th December 1956 at the Sun Records recording studio in Memphis. Over the course of the evening, the four rip through over 20 of the songs for which they became hugely famous with the help of two additional musicians and Presley’s girlfriend Dyanne who’s on hand to provide the odd bit of vocal support. There’s also something of an attempt to work in some proper story: mainly around the record label shenanigans with professional rivalries coming to the fore, testing friendships and loyalties of these four men at different stages in their career. Continue reading “Review: Million Dollar Quartet, Noël Coward”
