Athenian Berean Community Players will end its 2015-2016 theater season with a production of All the King’s Women.
The ABC Players will tell the story of “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” through the eyes of his women.
The final production of the season, All the King’s Women, will explore the celebrity of Elvis Presley from the perspective of the women who loved and hated him.
The community theater group will perform the play at Stuart’s Opera House on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday. Tickets, which are $12 for adults and $8 for students, are available at the opera house’s website.
The play is fictionalized history, Celeste Parsons, the director of the play, said.
“(The audience sees Elvis) through the reactions of the women he encounters,” Parsons said.
Parsons said the perspective was what drew her to the play.
“I think the playwright thought it would be an interesting twist,” Parsons said. “So many things focus on Elvis himself. This is really Elvis — the bigger-than-life, iconic figure.”
One scene explores Elvis’ famous, unannounced trip to the White House in which he showed up at the gate with a letter he had written on his flight to Washington and a collection of police badges. He hoped to ask President Nixon what he could do for his country while also obtaining a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The episode is seen through the eyes of three White House secretaries, Parsons said.
“If (one was) a fly on the wall at that point, or three walls in this case, what might (one) have seen?” Parsons said. “How would people react when the phenomena that was Elvis Presley came into their lives?”
Laura Marx said when her character Eve runs into Elvis at the supermarket, Eve finds the encounter to be a “life changing experience.”
Marx said the play reveals the realities of celebrity. Because the characters have “peripheral encounters” with Elvis, they get a superficial view of him, Marx said.
“Throughout the show, nobody really knows Elvis,” Marx said. “They all have their own idea of who Elvis is.”
Because the story focuses on the women’s perspective, the cast contains a majority of women.
“I love it,” Marx said. “There aren’t a lot of shows that have a lot of good female roles.”
Jodi MacNeal, president of ABC Players and an actor in the play, said the focus on women makes sense.
“I think because when (one thinks) about Elvis (one thinks) of him being a sex icon,” MacNeal said. “(One thinks) of all the women he encountered.”
However, MacNeal said these women are on a “different level” than obsessed fans or enamoured lovers. The audience might not think about some of their perspectives, MacNeal said. For example, one scene focuses on the store clerk who sold Elvis his first guitar.
Despite Elvis’ absence in the script, Parsons said she wanted to include song to set the scene.
Because several of the episodes reference Elvis’ songs and performances, Parsons enlisted the help of Alex Couladis, a local Elvis impersonator.
In one scene, Couladis will perform a rendition of “Hound Dog” in Elvis’ first appearance on The Steve Allen Show.
As the final show of ABC Players’ 2015-2016 season, All the King’s Women is a departure from the season’s more intricate productions, such as My Son Pinocchio, Charlotte’s Web the Musical and The Little Mermaid, Parsons said.
Because of the show’s minimal approach, MacNeal said the actors will depend on emotion and body language to engage the audience rather than elaborate set and props.
The focus on acting delivers a study of reaction to celebrity and the way Elvis affected an entire country, Marx said.
Parsons said the show’s tagline encompasses the meaning of the play. It states that the play will show the life of Elvis through women — “some enthralled, some appalled, ALL OBSESSED!”
“Some people were just head over heals for Elvis, some couldn’t really see what anyone saw in him, but you almost never had anyone who wasn’t interested,” Parsons said.
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