Walnut Street Theatre Presents Cole Escott and Floyd Mutrux’s Million Dollar Quartet

Million Dollar Quartet, now on stage at the Walnut Street Theatre through November 2, 2025, is a product of cultural recycling even Quentin Tarantino couldn't have dreamed of. Actors, playing their instruments live, try to channel deceased American music icons like Elvis Presley (Matteo Scammell) and Johnny Cash (Ken Sandberg), often nailing vocal cadences if not their physical presences. Director Fran Prisco, who also stars as Sam Phillips, looks much more like Colonel Parker than the younger, more granite-faced Sun Records producer. The show is critic-proof: you're either going to think it's kitschy Broadway junk or you're going to have a fun, cozy time watching a live concert with some dramatic scenes inserted in between. And to be fair to Jack Rabbit Slim's, they make a very good five-dollar milkshake.

Boosting commercial appeal

The Million Dollar Quartet book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux is based on an actual, extremely loose jam session between past and present rockabilly stars Presley, Cash, Carl Perkins (Paul Harrold), and Jerry Lee Lewis (Brian Michael Henry) on December 4, 1956 at the Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Together, with Phillips behind the boards, the foursome sang gospel songs they'd grown up with, like “Keeper of the Keys” and “Down By the Riverside” as well as country favorites, focusing more on keeping harmony than recording full covers or performances.

This critic has read three biographies of the four stars in question, including the magnificent two-part Presley biography by Peter Guralnick. In short, if you're looking for actual music history or accuracy, the glitzy, heavily fictionalized Million Dollar Quartet is not the source. The musical, armed with a budget and popular subject matter, wants to present the most simplistic, commercially appealing version of these rather complicated men to silver-haired attendees and younger fans. (On opening night, the one badly botched reference to Jerry Lee Lewis's horrific personal life received nervous laughter and an audible “Oh my god...”)

Presley’s girlfriend at the time, dancer Marilyn Evans, is swapped out for sultry Hollywood singer Dyanne (the very talented Kathryn Brunner), and the book writers manufacture thin drama out of Cash leaving Sun for Columbia, something which didn't happen until 1957, and Presley being tired of major label RCA, something which also very much didn't happen. There are telegraphed lines here about “the rock ‘n’ roll revolution” and tapping into what's deep down inside you, which wouldn't feel out of place in the 2005 movie Walk the Line or its biopic parody Walk Hard. (The musicians all referencing their dead siblings is hilarious.) Ultimately the book scenes are the worst part of the show.

Glossy entertainment

Million Dollar Quartet is not great dramedy or history, but it is extremely fun, glossy entertainment. Money and work were clearly put into Roman Tatarowicz's set design, including a huge neon Sun Records sign in the backdrop, as well as Ryan O'Gara's stadium-worthy lighting and Mary Folino's costumes. The production handily backs up what are objectively strong live performances of American classics like opener “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”. The inclusion of “Fever” is baffling, but Brunner gives a solid, sultry performance. It's obvious the actors are having fun playing these songs too, especially Michael Henry handily pulling off some showy, athletic Lee Lewis moves while banging away on the piano.

At times, I felt irritated by the show's crass quality: how it turned spontaneous artistic output from poor Southern sharecroppers into Broadway glamour decorated with dry ice and pink lighting. It also reminded me of seeing The Buddy Holly Story as a kid. Yes, Million Dollar Quartet indulges in 50s cosplay and spectacle. But it also gives you a fun live show with good singers, encouraging you to clap along to the rhythms of “Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On”. A wax museum, especially one with a pulse, can still be an entertaining place.