STAGE REVIEW: Million Dollar Quartet - at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, October 17 to Saturday, October 22, 2016.

IT’S coming up to the 60th anniversary of a musical explosion when four of rock and roll’s greatest exponents met up for a one-off session at the legendary recording studio’s that gave birth to the burgeoning careers of super-stars such as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

A spot of scheming and subterfuge was involved with top record producer of the time, Sam Phillips - the man credited as the creator of rock and roll - enticing Presley and Lewis, along with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, to meet with him at his Sun Studios in downtown Memphis.

The meeting, in early December, 1956, and relating to contracts actually produced music of seismic proportions with such a fusion of talent in the mix it might have knocked the Richter Scale into the next State!

This is a fitting and nostalgic return to those early halcyon days of rock and blues music - the night of that magical foursome all in the same studio, and how the opening night audience at the Malvern leg of this UK tour loved it.

Surprisingly there were quite a few empty seats and those who might have thought about it or simply didn’t bother missed an absolute treat.

These were another ‘fab four’ a few years before the Beatles began wearing that mantle, and as four individuals they had their own particular talents, musical beliefs and career routes.

Although some scratchy old recordings of the actual live event have survived it’s hard to imagine what that Sun Studios meeting produced and exactly how it must have been.

However, based on the book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrix, and this show conceived by the latter, this stage version fashions a fabulous glimpse of what probably occurred.

The four - Elvis, Carl, Johnny and Jerry Lee, played by Ross William Wild, Matthew Wycliffe, Robbie Durham and Martin Kaye - are, without argument, simply brilliant and you almost feel you are in the privileged position of eavesdropping. on the actual event.

Musical talents abound on guitar, bass and drums, including the two session musicians played by Ben Cullingworth and James Swinnerton. Throw into the mix the impressive vocal talents of Katie Ray, the Elvis ‘love interest’ at the time and its a heady concoction.

Personal favourite of the era and having witnessed his frantic performances on the piano live at Birmingham Town Hall Kaye's Jerry Lee will take some beating. Fantastic on the keys and what a livewire overall!

There’s not a great deal to the story itself with ingredients - besides the wonderful music, that include a mixture of resentment and humour, but it’s passionately and evocatively relayed by Jason Donovan’s.

Sadly, just as the whole joint was really beginning to shake to a couple of encores, we were informed - ‘Elvis has left the building’…

All over after two hours but what a memorable night. An excellent homage to a moment of musical history.