Star in the making – Aretha Ayeh in Love Me Tender at the New Wimbledon Theatre and Touring. Picture: Johan Persson
Love Me Tender continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 27 June, then tours until 26 September.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
The resounding success on both sides of the Atlantic of Joe DiPietro’s Tony Award-winning Memphis won’t harm the box-office takings for the UK debut of his first Broadway show, All Shook Up, and here it is, repackaged and retitled ten years down the line for a 16-city tour, winding up in Dublin in September.
Love Me Tender is exactly what it says on the tin – a high-octane jukebox musical comedy worked around 25 of Elvis Presley’s greatest hits, very loosely based on the Twelfth Night theme of Viola dressing up as a boy to get her man.
Here, it is Natalie, a tomboyish mechanic in a nondescript 50s Midwest town who falls for Chad, a handsome swivel-hipped, rock‘n’rolling biker who’s just out of jail and alights on her repressed community determined to give it a badly-needed kiss of life.
The place in under the control of Mayor Matilda who has introduced the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act outlawing “loud music, public necking and bright pants”, but Chad sets about changing all that as various romances unfold.
Natalie dons clumpy clothing and non-designer stubble to become his sidekick Ed in order to get closer to the man she’s fallen for, and it’s a complete load of harmless nonsense with guys and gals falling in love, often at two minutes’ notice, just to get us from one Elvis hit to another.
Chad wants Miss Sandra, the curator of the local museum (but not Ed’s alter ego Natalie); Dennis the geeky dentist who loves Shakespearean sonnets wants Natalie but instead lands a kindred spirit; mayor’s son Dean wants the daughter of the no-nonsense honky tonk proprietor; the silent sheriff wants the mayor, and widowed Jim finally realises that the lady who’s been his shoulder to cry on through his loneliness is far more than a friend.
Under award-winning director/choreographer Karen Bruce, this is a cast that really earns its money. The pace is fast and furious and never lets up, the dancing is vibrant and there are some great orchestrations and vocal arrangements by Matt Spencer-Smith.
If you can’t have fun at an evening like this, you shouldn’t be there in the first place. I caught the show at Wimbledon – first try-out was in Manchester two weeks earlier – and the audience simply lapped it up, standing to join in the end-of-show singalong.
The deep-soul voice of Mica Paris is really something – her ‘Fools Fall in Love’ is a high spot. It’s a pity we don’t get a few more solos from her, but there isn’t a weakness in a cast that includes Shaun Williamson, never to be forgotten as poor Barry in EastEnders but no mean singer or comedian either, Sian Reeves as the mayor, and the terrific Australian actor-singer Ben Lewis as Chad, who does his Elvis thing with utter conviction.
Respect to Lindsey Tierney, who covered wonderfully well for the sick Laura Tebbutt in the demanding cross-dressing role of Natalie – I’d never have guessed she was an understudy.
Mark Anderson does a great job with the lovesick nerd Dennis, and if sparky Aretha Ayeh, as the 16-year-old desperate for romance, is not a star-in-waiting, it won’t be for want of trying. Her energy lights up the stage.
The songs are all there – ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘One Night With You’, ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Teddy Bear’, ‘It’s Now Or Never’, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’, ‘Devil in Disguise’, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, ‘That’s All Right’ – the list goes on and on and on.
You can never get enough of these rock classics and I’d forgotten Elvis himself part-wrote quite a few of them like ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and ‘All Shook Up’. It was Presley’s unique voice, as much as the songs themselves or the sexy gyrations that made the girls swoon, that made the King so exceptional.
There will never be his like again for old rockers like me and this was a nostalgic reminder, 38 years after Presley’s untimely death at 42, of his greatness. Well worth seeing, even if you’re not a fan. You might well be afterwards.
Jeremy Chapman
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