{"id":552951,"date":"2026-04-27T08:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T08:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/552951\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T08:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T08:20:21","slug":"please-please-me-review-new-play-restores-the-danger-to-the-story-of-the-beatles-unstoppable-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/552951\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Please Me, review \u2013 New play restores the danger to the story of The Beatles\u2019 unstoppable rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

This spring, film crews have been popping up all over Liverpool as director Sam Mendes begins shooting his quartet of Beatles movies<\/a> \u2013 one for each member of the much-obsessed-over Fab Four. But what about the overlooked \u201cfifth Beatle\u201d? A couple of hundred miles south, at London\u2019s Kiln Theatre, the man who quietly shaped the band’s success is getting his moment in the spotlight. Written by Tom Wright, Please Please Me is a lightly salacious expos\u00e9 of Brian Epstein<\/a>, the infatuated manager who scrubbed up the band he loved and sold them to the world. <\/p>\n

When this shy, smart-suited businessman first ventures down into the Cavern Club<\/a>, he\u2019s instantly overcome by what he finds: \u201cfour towering man boys poured into leather,\u201d rhapsodises Calam Lynch, bringing an intense, repressed sexuality to the awkward Epstein. He\u2019s soon lured away from the family department store, Nems, run by his father (Arthur Wilson) \u2013 a man who\u2019s deeply ashamed of his gay son, even though he appreciates his knack for understanding the tastes of the record-buying youth. <\/p>\n

Epstein loves The Beatles\u2019 sound, but he knows it\u2019s their look that\u2019ll market them to audiences, so he sands off their rough edges and turns them into something softer, more family-friendly. The kind of boys he could bring home to his father, if his father wasn\u2019t a massive homophobe. And his tender attentions are trained most closely on John Lennon, brought to sarcastic, edgy life by Noah Ritter\u2019s standout performance. <\/p>\n

The early scenes feel a little stiff and artificial, padded out with exposition borrowed from the many, many books that have fetishised every detail of the Beatles\u2019 early lives. We hear that Lennon is posher than he pretends, that he\u2019s messed up by his absent mother, and controlled by staunch aunt Mimi (an enjoyably tart Eleanor Worthington-Cox). But that stiltedness melts away in a long, prickly, intimate scene in a Spanish hotel room between Epstein and Lennon. Wright\u2019s so insightful on the way that Epstein\u2019s repression and shame make him vulnerable to being manipulated \u2013 as well as on the violence that comes when ostensibly straight men fight down feelings a repressive society won\u2019t let them admit to.<\/p>\n

The band that Please Please Me nominally centres on seem weirdly absent from Wright\u2019s story. Without the rights to The Beatles\u2019 music, their genius can only be lightly suggested in David Shrubsole\u2019s cleverly crafted instrumentals, expanding on familiar riffs. Aside from Lennon, the other three Beatles necessarily remain offstage, only occasionally referenced by this play\u2019s hard-working, multi-roling cast. Instead, we get some inconclusive glimpses into the life of another of Epstein\u2019s protegees, Cilla Black (Worthington-Cox) \u2013 the relentlessly bubbly singing star who he emotionally leans on and professionally neglects, too stuck on John.<\/p>\n

Kiln artistic director Amit Sharma\u2019s staging is fluent and funny, deftly showing the seismic social changes rippling through Lennon and Epstein\u2019s relationship. The passage of time unbuttons them, embitters them, curdles their optimism into a drug-addled kind of self-delusion. Epstein can change the way the band dress, but he can\u2019t change who they are. He can only destroy himself, in a narrative that restores the danger to the endlessly-told story of The Beatles\u2019 unstoppable rise.<\/p>\n

\u2018Please Please Me\u2019 is on at the Kiln Theatre until 29 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This spring, film crews have been popping up all over Liverpool as director Sam Mendes begins shooting his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-552951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}