Rep Takes Us Back to Sun Studios

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Million Dollar Quartet at the Wilson Theater in Vogel Hall at Marcus Performing Arts Center, April 22 – May 24, 2025. Pictured: The cast of Million Dollar Quartet. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

The historic high school me of the past and the current me of experienced theatergoing were in conflict at Million Dollar Quartet. This is the final season offering for Rep Powerhouse subscribers, but it is at the Wilson Theater in the Marcus Performing Arts Center, one of the places the Rep has moved as it refurbishes its main performing space into the Associated Bank Theater Center.

The musical, which began in the Chicago area and has since played Broadway and London before returning to Chicago, reinvigorates the music I grew up on in high school in Oklahoma in the 1950s, where we drove fast cars on back roads listening to Sun Records on radios while creating our own hometown folk versions of this early rock, country and gospel mix. And did we know the largely unknown Sun stars of the era! They grew up to become Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Even if we didn’t have the tinny bootleg version of their famous impromptu jam session of 1956, we sure dug the music and the influences. We thought these Sun artists were authentic white hillbilly rockers, since in Oklahoma we didn’t get direct contact with the era’s so-called ”race records.” We still knew enough despite segregation to chuckle over how very white Pat Boone was making money off of banned Little Richard, or how even Elvis was exaggerating his pelvis to start making Hollywood money.

So the sounds of Million Dollar Quartet – much expanded and openly augmented here with snippets of Dean Martin tunes, a touch of Peggy Lee and some straight-out old-fashioned gospel (“Peace in the Valley”) – were the music of my formative years. “Blue Suede Shoes,” “That’s All Right,” “Down by the Riverside,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Hound Dog,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “See You Later Alligator” are still worth jamming and even over-jamming as this show does with an aggressive overly sexualized set of singers and instrumentalists.

But as much fun as the old ears had, the cold theatrical fact is this jam session has been hammed up and inflated with a mawkish book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux. I’m sure they are laughing all the way to the bank by fabricating moments from the now legendary histories of the four, concocting a tale of how they sang together just as they were leaving Sun for greener pastures. Nearly 70 years later, it is hard to shed a tear for the musicians’ personal dilemma, though their musical legacy endures.

Enthusiastic and then forlorn Sun founder Sam Phillips (sung well but acted broadly by Milwaukee actor Seth K. Hale) is a co-star catalyst in the plot while Aja Alcazar is also in and out the side doors to provide a sounding board for the plot and some nifty female vocals. Neither the cast nor the audience treat the chitchat as important, but it sure eats up time away from the music.

And the music gets a little glitter heavy as the singers pose and posture atop piano and bass fiddle, reviving the moves as well as the music of the era. There are some local talents to specify this road show (director Laura Braza, music director Dan Kazemi). They add polish and pace. Daniel Conway’s made-from-scratch set glorifies the Sun recording studio with photos and roaming space. Jason Fassl’s lighting adds oomph to the frozen tableaus and flashing spotlights to the flamboyant closing finales.

Much has been made in the ads about the nifty musicianship (and indeed the singing is more powerful than the acting) and that this show is about more than impersonation. Sure. But there are enough impersonator exaggerations to go around. These are icons replete with stuff to impersonate.

As much fun as JP Colletta is with his hair lock and feet bouncing around, his toes on the piano, he does make Jerry Lee Lewis a boogie-woogie disrupter, his job in the script. But there sure ain’t room here for subtlety.

Impersonation (by exaggeration) dominates Joe Hebel’s performance as the hip-twitching goose-stepping Elvis, but that’s the way the role is written. The show allows Elvis to take center stage again and again without ever suggesting he wrote his own songs like the others sometimes did.

The production also quiets things down when Blake Burgess (the Johnny Cash through May 11, when another actor takes over) echoes that deep baritone (“a voice with hair on its chest” was actually the description for the earlier “Ghost Riders in the Sky” singer Vaughn Monroe, but boy does it fit Cash). The audience stillness at those moments emphasizes that the actor and the stage directors were right to emphasize those notes when Burgess most imitates the man in black.

There is no gimmick of voice or movement to isolate Carl Perkins, but Armando Gutierrez makes his guitar work the star as the character ranges from bitter to good old boy.

Slick elements have been added to make it seem like a theater piece, but it doesn’t mount up to a real story. Both the historic me and the present me wondered why this wouldn’t have worked better as a straightforward concert.

Million Dollar Quartet, using many cast members who are veterans of the show, continues through May 24 at the Wilson Theater, which many know as Vogel Hall, in the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. It is over 100 minutes, performed without intermission. More information at https://www.milwaukeerep.com/shows/show/million-dollar-quartet/

Million Dollar Quartet Gallery

12►

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.