There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis

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A nostalgic, funny but quite hard-hitting evening among the warm theatrical Gatehouse community sees a long-held idea of Ovation’s director John Plews brought gutsily to life by close friend and Daily Express columnist Jennifer Selway in this ‘play with music’ premiere.

We’re in the west of Scotland in 1960, the day Sergeant Elvis Presley pays his one and only visit to these islands, changing planes at Prestwick on his way home from military service in Germany.

Greeting him are hundreds of screaming girls, including fan club organiser Jeannie (a superb performance from MTA graduate Pamela Wernham) and the other members of the Kilmarnock branch, local lasses Zoe (Hannah Howie) and Lizzie (Alison Tennant), and American teenager Ruth (Sarah Moss) who knows every bit of Elvis trivia and performs his hits beautifully on guitar.

Meanwhile, virginal Jeannie disappears for 20 minutes hoping for a personal audience with ‘the King’ and winds up best friend Zoe by concocting a story about having sex with him in the loo. Or is it a wind-up?

Around the same time and anxious to trap her reporter boyfriend Rob (a permanently frazzled Scott McFarlan) into a more permanent relationship, she gets herself pregnant after insisting that her first sexual experience in the back of a car be the real non-Durex deal.

While Jeannie had been ‘saving’ herself , feckless Rob was having his needs looked after by her forward best friend Zoe, a relationship that, unknown to Jeannie, goes on for 20 years through her marriage to the dreamer who sacrifices his Fleet Street ambitions to do “the right thing”.

Act I ends appropriately with Elvis’ ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ pumping out of one of those Dansette record players that are now collectors’ items.

Fast forward to 1981 (the year Kirsty MacColl wrote the title song) and Rob and Jeannie have separated. The innocent days of kissing an Elvis poster on the bedroom wall have long gone for the now 40-year-old Jeannie. Life is now real, life is earnest.

All that time Zoe has wanted Rob for herself, and is desperate to believe Vince, the product of that first youthful liaison who is running the local chippie while planning a career as an Elvis impersonator, is really Presley’s son.

The friendship between Jeannie and Zoe has, not surprisingly, totally soured and, in a climax that sees Jeannie belting out ‘It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want to’ and Zoe doing justice to the MacColl hit, Vince (LSMT graduate Adam Scott Pringle) dons the white Elvis suit Rob and Zoe have given him at his 21st birthday party, for his ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ Presley turn.

MD Jos Slovick doubles as an American GI/backing musician and Gareth O’Connor and Patrick Rowe are the other US elements in a lively, keen-to-impress cast in which the Scottish parts are all played by Scots, meaning there are no dodgy accents flying around.

Leah Sams’ set is nicely in period, sound designer Jon Raper works wonders with the flashing lights of a landing plane, and there’s some very tidy impromptu jiving when the cast enlist audience members to join them on-stage.

Director Plews says the concept for the show started at a pub quiz when he was the only one who knew the answer to ‘When did Elvis set foot in the UK?’. The idea lay dormant for a while until he brought it up to Selway who put it into dramatic form. And the rest, as they say, is history.

This isn’t great theatre, there’s nothing new musically (what’s wrong with the old if it’s the King himself?) but I absolutely loved it, was absorbed by it from Jeannie’s first entrance to the final Elvis medley, and can see it going down a treat at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bravo!

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A gutsy new play with songs, bolstered by strong central performances and a nostalgic soundtrack

After completing his national service in Germany in 1960, Elvis Presley was flown back to the USA to resume his recording career, stopping briefly to refuel in Prestwick, Glasgow. Officially, it was the only time he would have ever set foot on UK soil. On this slender fact, writer Jennifer Selway has crafted a light-hearted rights-of-passage drama, peppered with themes of friendship, fandom and infidelity.

Spanning two decades, Selway explores the agony and ecstasy of the first teenage generation via the Elvis Presley fan club (Kilmarnock Branch) and then 21 years later, as they face up to life and love as adults. It is an engaging, often gutsy drama that takes a while to find its feet, but, thanks to some punchy central performances and a nostalgic live soundtrack, this Edinburgh-bound show eventually wins through.

Pamela Wernham as Jeannie captures the energy and resilience of a young girl facing up to the demands of adulthood, while a marvellous Hannah Howie threatens to steal the show as the emotionally unsatisfied Zoe. The dynamic between these two characters, embroiled in a love-triangle with Scott McFarlan’s sleazy Rob, fuels the drama and provides many of the highlights, not least Howie’s venomous rendition of the title number.

What Elvis left in the building shown with expertise.

Using Kirsty MacColl’s ballad for its title, this slightly ramshackle play with music – it needs a little judicious cutting, which it should get before its Edinburgh debut – builds on might have happened on 3 March 1960 when Elvis, returning from military service in Germany, changed planes at the United States Airforce base at Prestwick.

Jeannie (Pamela Wernham) is president of the Kilmarnock branch of the Elvis Presley Fan Club and with her best friend Zoe (Hannah Howie) and the other two members, Lizzie (Alison Tennant) and, sole American member, Ruth (Sarah Moss), she goes to man the barricades in the hope of meeting the one they all love. They are joined by Rob (Scott McFarlan), a cub reporter on the local paper who is Jeannie’s boyfriend, a non- too-faithful one as he is actually getting from Zoe what Jeanie has so far not decided to give.

During the commotion Jeannie vanishes for 20 minutes, and the others, especially Zoe, reckon she managed to meet the King and nature took its course. Jeannie is not telling and decides at last to go all the way with Rob.

Flash forward 20 years, when the chickens come home to roost at the 21st birthday party of their only child, Vince, who runs a chip shop and is an Elvis impersonator.

The acting is of a high standard, Adam Scott-Pringle does a terrific Elvis impersonation and there is a splendid band under Jos Slovick to belt out the Elvis numbers which the women perform. The airport scenes as the girls wait with some American servicemen for the King are very funny. Scott McFarlan makes a splendid fist of a man destined to be walked over by strong women.

But it really needs to lose about ten minutes or so and, although they do them very well, the fact that the women all get a song in act three should be looked at; there is arguably one song too many. As for what Elvis left, that is for me to know and you to find out.

INSPIRED by the eponymous Kirsty MacColl song and the fact that Elvis Presley made only one brief visit to the UK when his army plane touched down at Prestwick airport near Glasgow, Ovation’s John Plews and writer Jennifer Selway have concocted a musical confection to make nostalgia hounds’ blue suede shoes explode with joy.

It’s 1960 and the Elvis Presley fan club of Kilmarnock (all four of them; Jeannie, Zoe, Lizzie and Ruth) are convening in Jeannie’s bedroom, a shrine to their god.

Little do they know that a major cataclysm is about to shake their chaste foundations when they learn that the King is to descend from the skies at nearby Prestwick airport in person.

They rush off to greet their idol. Jeannie, (Pamela Wernham) to impress the others, blurts out that she and Elvis had a quick knee-trembler in the airport toilets. This rankles with the deeply uncool Zoe, who thinks Russ Conway is where it’s at.

In act two we fast forward 21 years and Jeannie’s son Vince is an Elvis impersonator who works at the local chip shop. Is Vince a chip off the old block or not really the fruit of the King’s loins at all? Is Zoe (the awesome Hannah Howie) still shagging Rob, Jeannie’s on-off husband?

The whole cast are at their best when they are belting out a raucous number or crooning a drippy love song, and more of this 50s and 60s music would have soothed my savage breast.

Arthritics or grouches beware: if you sit in the front row you are likely to be pounced on by the cast to strut your stuff on stage in the final number.