Don't get all shook up but, despite its title and its subject, "Elvis People" is not a musical.

In fact, this latest installment of Mill Mountain Theatre's Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works features no Elvis Presley songs at all, and the King is largely AWOL -- he speaks just once (from offstage, to request yogurt) and appears onstage only briefly, as a mumbling figure hidden beneath satin sheets.

But that's OK, because the spirit of the ultimate American rock icon is fully present in this series of short, self-contained scenes that spend time with some characters who love him, some who hate him and some who seem to have decidedly mixed emotions about the guy.

A bobby-soxer discovers Elvis through "The Ed Sullivan Show" under the disapproving eyes of her parents.

A button torn from a Presley jacket comes between a high school couple in complicated ways.

A member of Elvis' entourage, one of the infamous Memphis Mafia, is treated with optimistic sympathy as he fetches Piggly Wiggly ice cream and unsuspecting groupies for the King.

A daughter shoulders her elderly mother through one last trip to Graceland, and two memorabilia collectors debate the concept of faith ... sort of.

Very early on, the vignettes have a disheartening pattern -- broad comedy that eventually descends into sometimes heavy-handed seriousness. But as they continue, the scenes hit more complex and satisfying notes.

The writer, Doug Grissom, fully addresses Elvis' weaknesses and his dark side, but he also appreciates and transmits what made him great and what made him resonate with the public. As such, "Elvis People" isn't just about the star and his fans but also about the way the culture and the country were shifted and scrambled -- for better and worse -- by pop culture.

Director Chip Egan funnels everything through minimal sets and develops the individual bits into a mosaic of characters and situations that's surprisingly surreal but effective.

This is an ensemble piece, and the large cast is uniformly strong. The actors all play a wide range of characters, but pretty much everyone gets his or her own big moment: Ed Sala brings a good-humored authority to the scenes in which he plays both a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran and an Elvis impersonator who experiences the ups and downs of the biz. Lucinda McDermott is great as a grieving mother who finds empathy at a lackluster concert. Meredith Holcomb shifts deftly from a high schooler bargaining with her virginity to playing a devastated young wife. Barbara Farrar gets a nice, creepy scene as an elderly murder witness; and, in the play's funniest chapter, Nick Newell and Claire VanCott shine as two hyper fans who get the ultimate nod from the King ... and then completely spoil their good fortune.

Those are just a few of the play's many bright spots and, at two hours and change, the play skids right up to the edge of going on too long, but the episodic nature of the vignettes helps a lot. The result is funny, surprisingly frank and hard to shake, a fine combination of Rod Serling and "Solid Gold Saturday Night."