JOIN USThe Million Dollar Quartet: A feast for the ears
It’s rare to have so many people in the city get up and dance when a play is being performed. And that’s exactly what the performance of ‘The Million Dollar Quartet’ managed to achieve in its screening at the St John’s auditorium at Koramangala.
The play tells the story of the impromptu jam session that took place on December 4, 1956. The members of the session are Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The well-acted and more importantly well-sung performance had a string of memorable songs, with each singer better than the other.
However, more than the four singers, the person who steals the show is the fine performance in the role of Marilyn Evans.
Not very often does a Broadway performance come to Bengaluru, and not very often do you see Bengalureans performing this way to a play. Towards the end of the play, people could be seen dancing near their seats.
The story is quite sad, and is ironically punctuated by some of the liveliest tracks from the four singers.
Told breaking the fourth wall, the play glides between the past and the present with extraordinary ease. The past is a punctuation created by the lighting.
With all its technical bravado, the play at the end of the day is very moving. It’s a story of Sam Philips feeling betrayed by four musicians he had discovered. Now they have outgrown him.
The play sometimes takes on the seriousness of a period piece, especially when conversations on rock and roll happen, given that the genre to many in 1954 was a plaything of the devil.
The play is quite funny, too. It takes on the caricatures of these four musicians as pop culture sees them and has them clash with each other for great comic effect, especially the heated exchanges between Jerry Lee and Perkins.
This play is a must-watch, and you must catch it before it leaves.
The play is on till March 8. Tickets on bookmyshow.