A play with a "whole lot of shakin' goin' on"

"Million Dollar Quartet" is one show where the actors play the audience as hard as they play their instruments.

Levi Kreis, who plays Jerry Lee Lewis in the musical, said that during the show, "Couples have been leaving the middle of the row and dropping their bags and dancing with each other. We've had girls come to the front of the aisle and shake during 'Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On.' "

With that rousing finale, "we like to create a safe environment for them to experience theater in a completely different way," said Kreis. "We're all trying to let them know this is a party, and you can let your hair down."

The musical does a "you are there" take on a memorable December day in 1956 when Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis came together for session work at Sun Records, the recording studio that gave all of them their starts. Full of bravado but still vulnerable, these young entertainers put their mark on an era and walked from obscurity into legend.

Village Theatre transfers the production to Everett from Issaquah on Friday, with audience response so good in Issaquah that the Everett run already has been extended a week.

The musical's title comes from a Memphis newspaper headline about that memorable session, organized by Sun Records owner Sam Phillips.

Deferential and polite, "these guys came from the churchgoing South," Kreis said. "They had a sense of moral obligation, whether they chose to battle with it, like Jerry Lee, where rock 'n' roll won out, or incorporated it into concerts, like Johnny Cash."

"The writers did an extraordinary job of penciling in everyone's interrelationships," said Lance Guest, who plays Cash.

Phillips, played by Matt Wolfe, comes off as a showman keeping tight control over his "talent," who became surrogate sons.

"Sam signed these guys and made them what they were," Guest said. "Nowadays, you've got to have a band, it's got to play clubs, you can't just walk in and say, 'Hi, I want to be a rock star.' It was different at that time."

The show's creators, co-directors Matt Walker and Floyd Mutrux, musical arranger and director Chuck Mead, and Colin Escott, who co-authored the show with Mutrux, have used hit after hit, including a lot of covers Cash made famous.

The energy increases with "Blue Suede Shoes," "The Wreck of the Old 97," "Fever," "That's All Right," "Rock Island Line," "Great Balls of Fire" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

But there's also an a cappella version of "Peace in the Valley" and quiet tunes performed as though they were new. It probably took the relatively innocent postwar 1950s to engage a whole country with a song like "See You Later, Alligator."

Though "Great Balls of Fire" ends the show, after the bows come four more songs, ending in that roof-raising version of "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On." As Jerry Lee Lewis, Kreis' chair-kicking, keyboard-banging performance is so wild he has to tape his fingers. If he doesn't, his cuticles split.

Pianist Kreis, classically trained at Vanderbilt University, said "Jerry Lee was one of my main influences as a child." Kreis said he was the family party trick, being asked to play "Great Balls of Fire" when he was 12 years old.

What he sees in common with Lewis is "the ability to lose oneself in the music, to zone out and go where the music takes you and not be afraid."

Dane Stokinger plays a young, deferential Elvis Presley, playing and romancing his girlfriend Dyanne (Jessica Skerritt). Rob Lyons plays guitar legend Carl Perkins, and Corey Kaiser is his bassist brother Jay, with James "Rif" Reif on the drums.

"The play is supposed to approximate a jam session," said Guest, a guitarist for more than 30 years who met the real Johnny Cash in 1989 in Hollywood. "It shouldn't feel like a performance. That's what's exciting about the idea. What would it feel like if you were there?"

Guest said the Sun Records sound was original.

"You can hear it in the records," he said. "There's a soul to it. Bluegrass and country and gospel were done one way for so long, and when they put them all together, it was an explosion."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com