Return to "Memphis," Musically

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 12 February 2010 21:38

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Memphis
Book and Lyrics by Joe DiPietro
Music and Lyrics by David Bryan
Directed by Christopher Ashley
Starring Chad Kimball, Montego Glover, J. Bernard Calloway, Michael McGrath

Although the city of Memphis was located in the heart of the Deep South where segregation was the order of the day, many white Memphians had a deep appreciation of rhythm & blues music. Sun Records' head Sam Phillips knew that there was a market for a hybridization of country music and rhythm and blues that would soon come to be known as rock & roll. Phillips would go onto sign such rock legends as Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, yes, Elvis Presley.

It would have been great had the play Memphis been a Broadway musical recounting of the Sun Records story. Alas, it is not. Instead, Memphis is a fictionalized version of how rock & roll grew out of what white Southerners called “race music” back in the late '40s and early '50s. As a result, we have to endure two hours watching the doomed interracial romance between Huey (Kimball) and Felicia (Glover).

Huey Calhoun is a junior high school dropout and a functional illiterate who has a love of gospel music and the fast-paced music that comes out of Delray’s Underground club on Beale Street every evening. After weeks of listening to these magical melodies outside the club, Huey works up the courage to enter. While the club owner, Delray (Calloway) appreciates this white man’s love of his music, he is somewhat incredulous at Huey’s pledge to make hit records out of it. He is also less than sanguine over Huey’s romantic interest in his sister, Felicia, who is an engaging chanteuse.

Huey eventually talks his way into a tryout a major Memphis radio station where Perry Como is considered cutting edge. As soon as he closes the studio door, Huey ditches anything considered clean-cut in favor of the music that he hears at Delray’s, including that of his infatuation, Felicia. The station manager, Mr. Simmons (McGrath), of course wants to fire him on the spot, but reconsiders when the phones start ringing off the hook, requesting more of the music that he is playing. Simmons can’t understand why teens like it but he does appreciate the fact that high ratings mean big bucks for his station.

Kimball plays Huey as a cross between such folksy populist commentators as Will Rogers and John Henry Faulk and that paragon of simplistic southern virtue, Gomer Pyle. It is funny for about 20 minutes but starts grating after that. Kimball’s happy-go-lucky simpleton act also detracts from the plausibility that Felicia, a beautiful, bright lady, would ever fall for this country bumpkin. Aside from their different backgrounds, Felicia can’t wait to get out of Memphis and go to New York while Huey enjoys being a big fish in his little pond.

Memphis is far more enjoyable when the dialog stops and the singing and dancing starts. Thankfully there are plenty of terrific original numbers, all of which were composed by Bon Jovi founding member and keyboardist, David Bryan. Among the memorable toe-tapping tunes here are “The Music of My Soul,” “Scratch My Itch,” “Everybody Wants To Black on a Saturday Night,” “Change Don’t Come Easy,” and “Steal Your Rock ’n’ Roll.”

It seems ludicrous that Presley’s name is not mentioned once during this show. It didn't seem coincidental that Memphis opened on Broadway just a few months before what would have been the 75th birthday of Memphis’s most famous resident. Incidentally, Legacy Records -- which controls Elvis’s RCA catalog -- is planning a four-disc, 100-song box set to mark the occasion.

Memphis
Shubert Theater
225 West 44th Street
Between Broadway and 8th Ave.
New York, NY

opened Oct. 19th, 2009