Backbeat is the adaptation of the 1994 film by Iain Softley on the birth of the Beatles.
Backbeat is the story of how The Beatles 'became' The Beatles - when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe embarked on their journey from the famous docks of Liverpool to search for success in the seedy red light district of Hamburg, working eight days a week, in the clubs of the tawdry Reeperbahn, performing rock 'n' roll covers night after night.
The compelling triangular relationship between the band's original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, the striking German photographer Astrid Kirchherr whom he fell in love with, and his best friend John Lennon, became an intrinsic part of the Beatles' story - and put them on an unstoppable trajectory onto the world stage.
Stuart's struggle between his best friend and the band, Astrid and his art, makes Stuart the troubled focus of Backbeat. His death, aged only 22, in the same year that the Beatles appointed Brian Epstein as manager, signed to Parlophone Records by Sir George Martin, and released their first single 'Love Me Do', adds to the poignancy of this remarkable and vivid portrait of the early 1960's.
Backbeat features the all-time rock 'n' roll classics that the Beatles cut their teeth with including Twist and Shout, Rock 'N' Roll Music, Long Tall Sally, Please Mr Postman and Money
Backbeat, an adaptation of Iain Softley's 1994 film on the birth of The Beatles, opened last night (10 October 2011, previews from 24 September) at the Duke of York's Theatre, marking its West End premiere.
Backbeat chronicles the band's beginnings when Stuart Sutcliffe, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best left Liverpool for Hamburg, searching for their big break.
Sutcliffe (Nick Blood) falls in love with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr (Ruta Gedmintas), creating a struggle within the band and testing his friendship with Lennon (Andrew Knott).
Don't miss our Whatsonstage.com Outing to Backbeat on 18 October, including a FREE drink and an EXCLUSIVE post show Q&A with the cast and creative team – all for just £32.50!
"In Softley’s own adaptation with Stephen Jeffreys, Andrew Knott’s jeering, sneering Lennon yields centre stage to the tragic, tortured figure of Nick Blood’s terrific Stuart Sutcliffe ... The narrative weaves artfully through the hardest, meanest rock ‘n’ roll I’ve ever heard on a West End stage ... The show’s like a painting itself, conjuring not only Stu’s manic splurges in the style of Jackson Pollock, but the grimy underworld of Hamburg on the Reeperbahn ... This use of projections is the weak spot in an otherwise brilliant design by Christopher Oram and Andrew D Edwards ... Daniel Healey sketches in Paul McCartney’s flip intelligence very nicely, and Will Payne is suitably blank, onstage and off, as George Harrison. This isn’t just another jukebox musical, nor is it another brain-dead tribute show. It’s a beautifully wrought and darkly cynical evocation of an era, and a particular place, as the Beatles found their inimitable voice through the grit and virility of the pounding music they loved still to play even as their own more lyrical, musically complex compositions poured forth over the next decade. For once, you really do feel like dancing in the aisles at the end."
"...This show largely left me bored and depressed. David Leveaux’s production is irritatingly arty and largely fails to capture the rackety atmosphere of the sleazy Hamburg clubs ... It doesn’t help that the actors playing the young Beatles look almost nothing like the originals. If you half close your eyes and the lights hit him at the right angle, Daniel Healy might just pass for McCartney but otherwise the actors strike me as marginally less convincing than the notoriously inept waxworks of the young Beatles at Madame Tussaud’s ... the acting company performs them live with zest, and there are decent performances from Nick Blood as the troubled, ailing Sutcliffe and Andrew Knott as the aggressive yet vulnerable Lennon. But the script by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys creaks with clichés and I left the theatre fervently wishing I’d stayed at home with my Beatles records and my memories."
"Director David Leveaux gives the thing plenty of flourish ... The music is strong, not least in volume. It is not wall-to-wall Beatles hits but simply the sort of songs the band played in the early days in a German roughhouse. That brothelly joint is fairly well suggested, not least by the amount of smoking that takes place on stage. Those sitting in the front of the stalls should prepare to passive-smoke a good packet or more of pongy herbal fags. Horrid! The worst thing about tribute shows is their lack of originality. Backbeat avoids that trap. I actually found myself rather taken by the thing, even if the docu-drama nature of musicals about great bands feels overdone. The Stuart Sutcliffe suggested here is given a choice between playing in a band or marrying a beautiful girl and studying art. The decision he took was a noble one."
Libby Purves The Times ★★
"Never mind that none of the actors are lookalikes (pointless: their originals are burned on our retinas). Not soundalikes either: Andrew Knott’s Lennon sounds at times more like Lily Savage, and musically we never get near that irresistible blend of Lennon’s sarky heaviness and McCartney’s romantic lightness ... the show can’t decide whether to be a play about real people in transition, or a cheesy jukebox musical ... but this ... falls between two stools like a Reeperbahn drunk. These relationships are sketched, but rather than explored are constantly interrupted by full-length renderings of the hackneyed rock covers the Beatles did before songwriting talent flowered. An unconvincingly small ensemble of jerking groupies and drunks takes the foreground, plus an excruciating comedy German MC. You feel that you are meant to scream and stamp, but nobody did."
"Let's get one thing clear: this is far from another lazy compilation musical to clog up the weakening arteries of the West End. For a start it has been written with care and finesse rather than lumped together. The transition to the stage works slickly ... the feel of a low-life Reeperbahn nightclub is easily conveyed and the songs - mostly covers rather than original numbers - seem natural. The actors playing Paul, George and Ringo aren't going to trouble any Beatles look-alike competitions, but they can certainly knock out a chord and bang a drum ... Blood can't muster the easy charisma that Dorff oozed in the film but Knott ... makes fine work of Lennon's chippy loyalty. Director David Leveaux captures the fizzing energy of this brink-of-change era ... there are intriguing nods to themes that would develop as Beatlemania took over the world ... Backbeat is a back-story to cherish."
“The backbeat of a snare drum, set against a four-square, driving rhythm, was the early hallmark of rock ’n’ roll,” the programme helpfully informs us. The show itself, first seen last year at the Glasgow Citizens, is an exhilarating account of the Beatles – then known as The Quarrymen – in Hamburg in the early 1960s.
David Leveaux’s tight, dark and attractively bleak production is derived from Iain Softley’s 1994 movie, in which Ian Hart gave an outstanding performance as John Lennon.
Here, in Softley’s own adaptation with Stephen Jeffreys, Andrew Knott’s jeering, sneering Lennon yields centre stage to the tragic, tortured figure of Nick Blood’s terrific Stuart Sutcliffe.
The two met at Liverpool Art College, and painting always comes first for Stu, especially after he starts a Hamburg romance with Astrid Kirchherr (a lovely performance from lissom Ruta Gedmintas), the blonde photographer who was the group’s first groupie.
The narrative weaves artfully through the hardest, meanest rock ‘n’ roll I’ve ever heard on a West End stage, from Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode,” Little Richard’s “Good Golly, Miss Molly” (with its extraordinary mid-way rhythmic switch) and the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” all the way to the Beatles’ characteristic first hit, “Love Me Do,” the only song of theirs that is played.
The show’s like a painting itself, conjuring not only Stu’s manic splurges in the style of Jackson Pollock, but the grimy underworld of Hamburg on the Reeperbahn, where the boys played six hours a night for an audience of pimps, rockers and prostitutes, and slept behind a flickering cinema screen.
Stu’s tragedy involves escaping John’s clutches and dying too early. The other personnel jolt when the group returns to London comes when record producer George Martin insists that Pete Best is replaced as drummer by Ringo Starr; the show offers no evidence to prove this was a necessary move, and Oliver Bennett’s incensed and deeply hurt Pete is etched with reasonable indignation.
Brian Epstein hovers on the fringes, too, while the fringes themselves complete the definitive post-Hamburg look of the Fab Four kitted out in Astrid’s grey jackets. Daniel Healey sketches in Paul McCartney’s flip intelligence very nicely, and Will Payne is suitably blank, onstage and off, as George Harrison.
This is isn’t just another jukebox musical, nor is it another brain-dead tribute show. It’s a beautifully wrought and darkly cynical evocation of an era, and a particular place, as the Beatles found their inimitable voice through the grit and virility of the pounding music they loved still to play even as their own more lyrical, musically complex compositions poured forth over the next decade. For once, you really do feel like dancing in the aisles at the end.
Just managed to get over to see it from Guernsey, it was fabulous. I have sat through a well known London show and left half way through. It was sad, nostalgic, funny and historical.
I hope it tours the UK - Lorraine
16 Feb 12
After hearing so much about this play I found it Ok. Very nostalgic as I was a teenager in the Beatles era and loved all their songs, so nostalgic and interesting story of their pre Ringo days but I found it in parts a bit slow. All the cast were very good, specially Nick Blood and Andrew Knott. - Joe Spiteri
12 Jan 12
This incredible show ends its run in mid Feb - quite unbelievably! The skill of particularly Nick Blood as the 5th Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe, graphically interpreting a tragic, manic, creative character is outstanding, moving, utterly credible fusing the audience with him through crisis to joyous exuberance and back to crisis. Hamburg's seedy clubs in 1960 alongside Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Harrison, their music intermittently taking centre stage between dramatic scenes of scorn, satire, disbelief/thrill at meeting George Martin and Brian Epstein in the era of 1960s free love leading to true love when Sutcliffe and Astrid played beautifully by Ruta Gedmintas achieve true Romeo and Juliet tragedy is a show not to miss. Let's hope it will tour. - Sandra Dudley
05 Jan 12
Absolutely blistering portrayal of the early Beatles cutting their rock n roll teeth and losing their innocence in Hamburg. Superb staging, excellent characerisation and phenomenal playing and singing! It takes a few liberties with the facts ( McCartney is right handed here!) but this is a triumphant production with a very talented young ensemble! Love it and live it again!! - Tim Armitage
14 Dec 11
Fantastic, I went to see this show on Saturday, I had my heart thumping with the raw emotion of the music, I had a tear rolling down my cheek and I was dancing in the aisles - Val Collier
27 Nov 11
I thought this was great show, it's more than just a jukebox musical. Entertaining from the outset, tells a story, nicely moving from scene to scene, lots of great music (played live), moving at times, harsh at times, felt very real. And great rousing party atmosphere to leave :-) Up there in my top shows of the year, and I've seen a few. - Julia
15 Nov 11
I cant wait to see the play, but i really hope it does not have the fabricated scene that is in the film version which depicts a drunken Stuart beating up Klaus in a flury of jealousy. I was exceptionally blessed and fortunate to have had email contact with Klaus Voorman regarding that scene in the film, and Klaus vehemently stated how much he disliked that fight scene, and that the fight scene was entirely a fabrication and a false depiction of Stuart, and of his relationship with Klaus. I would love to know from anyone who has seen the play if that scene is in the play also.
I truly hope it is not, because that scene took too many liberties and was entirely untrue. - Ursula
24 Oct 11
When you watch X-Factor on the weekend, remember there was once a time when pop groups learned their craft by hard slog and trial & error. The Beatles would never have been the greatest band the world has ever seen if they hadn’t spent the best part of two years playing lengthy sets in the Cavern in Liverpool and in much seedier clubs in Hamburg.
What Backbeat does by focusing on this brief but intense and important period is show us how it all began. The fact that it uses young actors who have recently learnt, and are still learning, to sing and play gives it an authenticity which brings the story alive. It’s not a musical; it’s a play – but the musical sequences are crucial and become increasingly competent and exciting as the story develops. They’d sound a lot better played by professional musicians, but that would miss the point and be a lot less true to the story. I loved the rawness and raggedness of the music because it felt so real.
In this period, of course, original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe looms large. Lennon’s art school mate who can’t play a note but is super-cool joins the band, falls for photographer Astrid Kirchherr & steals her from fellow artist Klaus Voorman, leaves the band for Hamburg Art School (under Edward Paolozzi no less – even this Beatles obsessive didn’t know that!) and dies tragically. Paul switches to bass and Pete Best is dumped for Ringo and the rest is history. When they put on Astrid’s jackets and strike the first chords of Love Me Do, there was a shiver up my spine and a tear in my eye. This is where the musical soundtrack of my life really began.
It really does tell the story well. Comparisons with Jersey Boys are unfair - this is not a biographical retrospective on a spectacular scale with a band’s entire back catalogue; it’s a play focusing in more depth on a short formative period. Both are great, but completely different.
They actors don’t impersonate the fab four (five) but they brilliantly convey the essence if the people. Andrew Knott has Lennon’s attitude, power and influence and Daniel Healy’s McCartney is the more serious, and seriously ambitious, musician (with spot-on nodding!). Will Payne captures the much younger George, quietly in awe of the others, growing up before your eyes. There’s less pressure on Oliver Bennett as Pete Best and Nick Blood as Sutcliffe as we know less of their characters, but they’re both excellent. Adam Sopp’s Ringo only arrives in the final scene, but his inimitable grin made me smile.
There isn’t a moment wasted in David Leveaux’s staging and the design team of Christopher Oram, Andrew D Edwards, Howard Harrison, David Holmes, Timothy Bird and Nina Dunn have created an environment which allows a fluid flow from scene to scene and location to location.
I loved this show, and I don’t think that’s entirely because of how much The Beatles meant to me. It’s a great story well told. They don’t even get to use that extraordinary back catalogue - we never get beyond Love Me Do – yet you can hear the beginnings of that sound that has not been equalled in the fifty years that have passed since. Give X-Factor a miss and find out how real talent develops. - Gareth James
19 Oct 11
After having read some of the critics reviews I was wondering if I had done the right thing in buying a ticket for a friend's birthday present - he is a true Beatles conoisseur! I am pleased to say "How could they be so wrong?" Finely staged and acted with good musical performances, it was amusing, moving and informative.
I suppose the difficulty will be in the marketing - people will come to see it (and I hope they do) with different expectations as to what they are going to see. - Aphro
19 Oct 11
I saw this last week,
I thought the cast were so talented, The staging was fantastic and really liked the projections with Astrid Ketchers photograghs,
Loved the rock n roll songs and Love Me Do at the end, I felt I was witnessing the birth of The Beatles, A great night out - Linda Grenfell
Opened 10 Sep 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre,name changed in 1895. Major refurbishment 79/80. Taken over by the Royal Court during their two year refurbishment starting in 1996, called the Royal Court downstairs. 650 seats. Society of London Theatre member. An [ATG] member.
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