About us

The original idea was very simple. I had seen one of those ‘Shakespeare's Greatest Hits In an Hour' type shows. As a producer of a couple of large Elvis Festivals I thought matching an Elvis song, performed by a tribute artist, with a tenuous link to the previous piece of Shakespeare delivered by actors would be a perfect show for the Edinburgh Fringe. The hook to giving Et Tu Elvie much more depth was the phrase ‘The World's a Stage' which of course Elvis famously says in the middle of the song ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight.' The light bulb came on when I went back to Shakespeare where the phrase is used in the Seven Stages of Man monologue. Nobody lived his life on a stage more than Elvis but the tragedy was that the seventh stage of life was over by the age of forty-two. The idea to tell the story of Elvis' life as a seven part Shakespearean tragedy was beginning to take shape.

What's fantastic about Shakespeare is all themes of life can be found wisely in his words. All we needed to do was find what we wanted to explore in Elvis' life and mash up the appropriate text to create a story. What is at the core of our story is an investigation into Elvis 'the man' and Elvis 'the stage persona' and how sometimes the lines can become inevitably blurred. It has been a fantastic journey of adaptation and so much fun bringing it to life with talented actors. It is a high energy, fast paced show that will give audiences further insight into the life & death of Elvis Presley, but also hopefully, a new appreciation of Shakespeare's words set to a musical 1950-70's Memphis world.