Those who love the music popularized by Elvis Presley can certainly expect a jolt from “All Shook Up,” Diamond Head Theatre’s musical production that opens Friday, but, as they say, there’s more.
Creator Joe DiPietro wrote the story around a string of 26 songs associated with Presley, including “Fools Fall in Love,” a song that was first an early hit for the Drifters, and his approach ensures that “All Shook Up” isn’t a formulaic jukebox musical.
“ALL SHOOK UP”
Where: Diamond Head Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday; continues at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays through June 11. Additional shows at 3 p.m. May 27 and June 3.
Cost: $15-$50
Info: 733-0274, diamondheadtheatre.com
A jukebox musical is constructed around songs that are pop-culture favorites and would have/could have been heard on a jukebox. Hawaii audiences have embraced all kinds of these productions, from biographical works such as “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline,” about the country star, and “Jersey Boys,” about the Four Seasons, to nostalgic works like “Forever Plaid,” a celebration of 1950s pop. Utterly fantastical stories like the ABBA-inspired “Mamma Mia!” have also proved satisfying.
DiPietro took songs made famous by Elvis and wove them through a story that could have come straight from one of Presley’s whimsical, mid-1960s movie musicals. The kicker is that some of the plot twists are from Shakespeare.
The Shakespearean angle is light-handed, observes DHT Artistic Director John Rampage: “You don’t have to be familiar with ‘Twelfth Night’ to understand it.”
The show has been on Diamond Head Theatre’s shortlist for a couple of years, Rampage said.
“Hawaii has such a different relationship with Elvis and his music,” Rampage noted. “He never became a joke here like he is sometimes on the mainland, with ‘Elvis has left the building’ and some of the Elvis impersonators. Hawaii has always had a tremendous respect for him and and his music.”
The show is not an Elvis biography, but Elvis fans who watch for them will notice references to his films and records. (For instance, the male lead is named Chad in “All Shook Up,” while Elvis played Chadwick “Chad” Gates in the 1961 film “Blue Hawaii.”)
It isn’t about being a look-alike, either.
SONG LIST FOR “ALL SHOOK UP”
>> ACT 1
“Jailhouse Rock”
“Love Me Tender”
“Heartbreak Hotel”
“Roustabout”
“One Night With You”
“C’mon Everybody”
“Follow That Dream”
“Teddy Bear/Hound Dog”
“That’s All Right”
“It’s Now or Never”
“Blue Suede Shoes”
“Don’t Be Cruel”
“Let Yourself Go”
“Can’t Help Falling in Love”
>> ACT 2
“All Shook Up”
“It Hurts Me”
“A Little Less Conversation”
“The Power of My Love”
“I Don’t Want To”
“(You’re the) Devil in Disguise”
“There’s Always Me”
“If I Can Dream”
“Can’t Help Falling in Love”
“Fools Fall in Love”
“Burning Love”
The owners of the show are more concerned about theaters casting the right type of actor.
“They’re very specific about that,” Rampage said. “‘When you do the show, make sure you have a Chad.’ They don’t have to look like Elvis, they don’t have to sound like Elvis — but they have to have that nonthreatening sexuality about them.”
DHT’s “Chad” is Kaimana Ramos, who is back in Hawaii after working at Tokyo Disneyland. Rampage got Ramos together with director Malindi Fickle and musical director Ike Webster, and everything came together. Rampage called Ramos “a good fit” for the role.
Chad, described as a “hip-swiveling, guitar-playing roustabout,” turns up in a small Midwestern town shortly after being released from prison. He needs someone to repair his motorcycle, and that turns out to be a young mechanic named Natalie, who of course falls in love with him at first sight. Meanwhile, Chad discovers while waiting for the repairs to be completed that he’s stuck in a town where the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act prohibits tight pants, loud music and “public necking.” What will he do?
The plot takes a Shakespearean turn when Natalie disguises herself as a man named “Ed” so she can be “one of the guys,” and while in male impersonator mode catches the eye of a woman Chad is interested in. Several other couples likewise discover that the road to true love is rarely an easy one.
Folks familiar with local theater remember Ramos as Mark in Manoa Valley Theatre’s 2014 production of “Rent” and as Link Larson in Paliku Theatre’s 2014 staging of “Hairspray.”
Sarah Halford co-stars as Natalie/Ed, with local stage veterans Matthew Pedersen as Natalie’s widower father and Aiko Schick as the owner of the local honky-tonk.
Director Fickle, also a filmmaker, is back at DHT after directing “A Christmas Story” in 2015. She describes “All Shook Up” as “a story about love.”
“We witness a lonely, colorless town being brought to Life as Love is introduced,” Fickle writes in her playbill notes. “Each member of the community awakens and connects to both their individual spirit and the community at large as they face, embrace and ultimately celebrate what it is.”