Program Notes
“All Shook Up” is an unforgettable show that will have you talking about it for days. So exciting and full of laughter, love and romance. Speaking of romance, I strongly suggest that our audience have an understanding of Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet, which is where the story line comes from. Understanding Shakespeare’s sonnet will help the audience grasp the love triangle that’s affecting the characters.
The American influence on teenagers was huge in the 50’s. Rock and Roll idols including Elvis Presley, Bill Hayley, Jerry Lee Lewis and film stars James Dean and Marlon Brando set fashions almost unwittingly. The main looks for teenagers were greasers and preppies. Greasers followed the standard black leather and denim jeans look. They raced about town on motorbikes and were consider outrageous. Preppie qualities were neatness, tidiness and grooming. Teen girls wore full dirndl or circular skirts with large appliqués on their clothing. Neat pleated skirts were also popular. The pleated skirts were made from a then new fabric that was polyester which helped maintain razor sharp sunray pleating.
Back to the show, some of Presley favorites from his music in the show was "Heartbreak Hotel" to "Burning Love" into the peppier "All Shook Up" which blends these songs into such a bright, brassy blur that it's hard to distinguish one from another. The numbers have been unconditionally purged of the menacing sex appeal that once made Presley appear so dangerous to parents of teenagers. Just to make things perfectly clear - and to forestall disappointment for a certain species of fan - there are no bona fide Elvis impersonators in view. The leading man is instead an airbrushed, edgeless composite of the young Presley A leather-jacketed, bike-riding, blue-suede-shoe-wearing roustabout named Chad. He is played with winking good humor and subjected to the kind of soft, family-friendly parody common to variety-show sketches from four or five decades ago.
The plot: Chad arrives in a small Midwestern town that is smarting under an inhibiting "decency proclamation," instituted by its uptight mayor Matilida and teaches the squares how to swing. This means that the hormones of just about everybody - from a sweet young garage mechanic Natalie to her lonely, widowed dad Jim Haller- start percolating and love crosses forbidden boundaries of race and gender.
"All Shook Up" crams as many familiar songs as it can into its two acts, with deliberately corny, oft-repeated segues of dialogue. On first meeting objects of their lust, characters wail the title lyrics from "One Night With You."
"All Shook Up," the Elvis Presley-inspired show that is pumping its plastic pelvis at several theaters around the world, is unlikely to evoke anything close to such extreme, last-straw responses from its audiences. Within its unimaginative but ever-expanding subgenre - the prefab musical that takes its score from Top 40 hits of the past - this production actually rates as slicker and more skillful than most.
The audience is about to see how the development in the western world of the 1950s were generally considered both socially conservative in the law of the time period in the play. Within this law they had roles that encouraged or enforced traditional values or behaviors, But once Chad shows up, it takes the townspeople for a twist and there values and beliefs are thrown out the window.
But this relative slickness only highlights the emptiness of "All Shook Up," which uses songs made popular by Presley to fuel a fairy tale about a pleasure-challenged small town during the Eisenhower era.
The conflict in the story line of the musical would be the interracial dating but the time period and the issues that African Americans had to deal with then, but to some viewers it may be a little offensive when it comes to some of the context used. For instance the law within the show against interracial dating and the language that’s used which is not to harmful but someone may get offended. You see this romantic relationship spark between Dean and Lorraine which causes a lot of chaos between the two of there families and how they have to hide out in the old fairgrounds just to be together and be happy but then later you will see what happens, which may be a shock, but all worth seeing.

Broadway National Tour of "All Shook UP" in september of 2006
Reviewer: Sandra MacDonald

With some notable exceptions, however, the touring production of the show doesn't get much of a boost from its principals. Joe Mandragona may have the requisite physique for the Presleyesque roustabout Chad, but his pelvic gyrations don't generate much heat. Maybe that's because his voice is rather high and thin. What's a Presley without that warm tremolo guaranteed to set aural G-spots thrumming?