Theatre review: Elvis is my Daddy, Everyman, Cork

This musical comedy is about an ageing cabaret singer, a former mega star on the Las Vegas entertainment scene, making her comeback after 40 years away from the stage. Eilish O’Carroll, best known as the dowdy Winnie McGoogan in Mrs Brown’s Boys, is transformed into a glamour pot that is well able to hold a note in the role of Lana Lavelle.

Her two daughters, the shy awkward Bette-Davis Lavelle (Elaine Hearty) and the brazen Lulabelle Lavelle (Clelia Murphy who plays Niamh Brennan in Fair City) join their mother in a club where family tensions rise to the surface. The daughters don’t know who their fathers are. Bette-Davis hopes that Elvis Presley, with whom it’s rumoured her mother had a dalliance, is her father. She reveals her great singing voice and performs a fine rendition of Janis Ian’s ‘At Seventeen’, identifying with the plain girl in the song, unlike her sister who is beautiful if somewhat ugly inside.