"All Shook Up" is a musical comedy we're going to see a lot of in the years ahead.

It's a new show few have heard of, because it fizzled in 2005 on Broadway, running only six months. But just about everyone recognizes the Elvis Presley song of the same name, and that's what "All Shook Up" is: a "jukebox" musical with a score made up of Elvis songs.

What's not to like?

This is the first year the rights have been available to high schools, and four jumped at the chance: Ambridge and Karns City, which both staged it last weekend, the de facto opening of the high school musical season, and coming up, Chartiers Valley (opening Wednesday) and Schenley (April 24-May 3).

Having seen it originally on Broadway, where I found it a modestly clever, lightweight concoction with a nostalgia-laden score, I was looking forward to seeing how it would hold the high school stage. Judging by Ambridge, I can say it must have been designed for high schools all along.

As is often true, what's new is also old. Not only is the score pure golden oldie, but the plot invented to create a context for those songs is a farcical comedy of mixed up lovers that bears a striking resemblance to Shakespeare's love comedies in general and, to a lesser degree, "Twelfth Night" in particular.

But it doesn't really require the Shakespearean plot device of the young woman who dresses up as a guy so she can hang out with the man she loves to connect Elvis and the Bard. That's already done by the songs. Again and again, "All Shook Up" and the other Elvis song titles sound like subtitles for undiscovered Shakespearean comedies, such as "Follow That Dream," "Let Yourself Go" or "Fools Fall in Love."

Just like Shakespeare's comedies, the Elvis songs (along with maybe half the pop songs ever written) celebrate first love, hopeless love, giddy love.

As I say, just try them as subtitles: "The Taming of the Shrew, or, Love Me Tender"; "Much Ado About Nothing, or, Don't Step on My Blue Suede Shoes"; "All's Well That Ends Well, or, Heartbreak Hotel."

You'd even have some titles left over for the problem plays or tragedies: "Measure for Measure, or, Jailhouse Rock"; "Titus Andronicus, or, Don't Be Cruel."

That "All Shook Up" provided such fun for the Ambridge audience may have been a surprise to some, who probably came mainly to see the new high school's handsome and gratifyingly compact auditorium, named Bridger Theatre. The school and theater opened in January.

It's wide but only 16 rows deep, which makes it feel almost intimate. Although the crew was probably still reading instruction books and searching for the switches, "All Shook Up" went off remarkably glitch-free.

The story starts sometime in the benighted '50s when a motorcycle-riding "roustabout" named Chad (think the young Marlon Brando, James Dean or ... well, Elvis) arrives in a small West Nowhere town, presided over by a repressive mayor (think "Footloose"), who's a proponent of the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act and thinks bebop is the enemy. It's so bad, someone says, ""Boy, this town makes me miss Ambridge."

Stuck there having his chopper fixed, Chad diagnoses the town's problem as timid youth, broken-down men and unsatisfied women, and just by his presence (plus his dancing and music) he starts to stir people up.

"I never thought I'd feel so much for someone I pretty much met this morning," says the mayor's military school son -- but of course it's feisty, cute Lorraine he's just met, so what's the surprise?

Before long there are at least four couples, both teenagers and their parents, variously in love with the wrong people. This includes Chad, who feels oddly drawn to his new sidekick, Ed, really grease-monkey Natalie in disguise, who is also the object of desire for classy Miss Sandra.

So Natalie and Sandra are Viola and Olivia in "Twefth Night," if you're keeping track. Otherwise, the parallels are too few to worry about, although Bard nerds like me would get a kick out of Sandra's yelling, "Play on! Play on!" at the end of Act 1.

Act 2 takes us to the town's derelict amusement park (if it had a functioning amusement park it would be a happier place, duh), which feels more like the segue into the forest in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Everyone arrives on a different quest and joins in singing "All Shook Up," which they are.

Later, they all sing "I Can't Help Falling in Love (with you)." As Chad wisely observes, "in the right light, with the right liquor, anyone could fall for anyone."

The script is full of such deadpan humor. As each familiar Elvis song begins, you savor the deft or abrupt way it is squeezed into the plot. And you might wonder why the main set, with an empty highway stretching westward, is framed by a honkytonk bar and a shoe store, until you notice that more and more of the cast acquires blue suede shoes (don't step on 'em!).

Brad Perciavalle brought a perfect deadpan cool to Chad, and the energy and voice of Mary Rushin made me wish we saw more of Lorraine. But the show's true star was Ali Lewandowski as "Natalie also known as Ed." She revealed herself slowly, first her voice and then her comic instincts, and it eventually turned out she could dance, as well.

Overall, one of the chief attractions was that the whole cast had such fun. I enjoyed Darci Kokoski's choreography, but I wish there had been more, the cast enjoyed it so, since it was the kind of social dancing they could actually do. Brenda Harsch-Menjivar music directed and led a guitar-heavy pit orchestra about 60 percent adult.

The show obviously owed a great deal to director Lora Oxenreiter, who had the wit to choose it and the ability to get a willing cast -- just 37, but seeming like many more -- to play all the silliness for what it's worth.