Goodspeed Musicals' "All Shook Up" revisits Old Time Rock and Roll with a vision for the future

Barring the coincidence that a genuine jukebox occupies notable space on the stage of the Goodspeed Musical’s current production of All Shook Up, this collection of mostly pre-existing Elvis tunes shakes, rattles and rolls beyond the usual limits of the juke-box musical genre. Had Joe Dipietro, the creator of the show twenty years ago, settled on revealing a mere outline of the life of Elvis Presley - via a string of two dozen or so of the King's songs - an entertaining, albeit thin musical biopic would likely have been born. Instead, Dipietro's All Shook Up dares to tell the story of an era - not an icon -- and in so doing captures the for-better-or- worse values of the Fifties while offering an opportunity to reflect on our own 21st century mixed bag of beliefs.

Interestingly, that two decades old "dry run" of material took place at the nearby Terris Theatre, the "second stage" of the Goodspeed dedicated to developing and presenting new musicals. And even then Daniel Goldstein, the director of the current 20th anniversary production, had a hand in walking Dipietro's material across a barebones stage, working with then director Christopher Ashley.

"Yes, I was in on it when it first happened," Goldstein recently told the Hartford Courant, emphasizing that this summer's version is totally new. And while shows do not often move from The Terris Theatre to the Opera House, All Shook Up, rises to the occasion helmed by Goldstein's direction, choreographed with new-found energy by Byron Easley, and musically directed by Adam Souza and Adam J. Rineer.

In All Shook Up's latest rendition, the bareness of the early Terris Theatre stage is long gone. This time the relatively small Goodspeed proscenium (with only 29' x 20' of usable space) magically transforms from a rock and rollin' two-tiered prison, to a genuine Fifties hang out (jukebox in view), to a motorcycle repair shop, to a remarkably surreal moveable feast of a portrait museum.

The musical also packs comic-book-like punches, allowing the audience to see (or in this case musically hear) unabashed inner thoughts, as one character falls in love with another and another and then another. For All Shook Up is much more than one love story. It is a testament to young love, romantic love, love-at-first-sight, sensuous love and even, most poignantly, elder love after great loss.

Scene by scene, the entire ensemble never misses a heartbeat. Though, by the end of Act One, it's not certain who is going to eventually end up with whom, there's an even bigger surprise brewing: Who will turn this 1950s Anytown USA, marked by ultra-conservative restraints and segregation, into the harmonious world Elvis dreamed of in his 1968 rendition of W. Earl Brown's song, If I Can Dream. By the time the full cast takes on that tune which musically reiterated Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream " speech, the stunner is revealed.

“All Shook Up” runs through Aug. 24 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. Performances are Wednesdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 7:30 pm., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 and 6:30 p.m. with added Thursday matinees on July 31, Aug. 7 and 14. $35-$88. goodspeed.org.