John Brosnan in the touring production of Let It Be at the Palace Theatre, Manchester
Let It Be continues at the Palace Theatre, Manchester until 8 March, before touring until 5 July 2014.
I’m not sure that, strictly speaking, you could class Let It Be, a theatrical tribute to the Fab Four – which has been a West End mainstay since its debut in 2012 – as a musical. Forty of the Beatles’ best-known and most fondly remembered songs are performed in a roughly chronological order, tribute-band style, by a quartet of talented actor/musicians – drawn from an ensemble of ten – portraying John, Paul, George and Ringo without much in the way of biographical context or narrative.
Tim McQuillen-Wright’s stagings group the songs into distinct sections – the Cavern Club, Beatles at the Movies, Sergeant Pepper and, in the show’s most vividly realised segment, Shea Stadium – while real and created newsreel footage played out on video screens nominally plots out the course of the band’s career from Merseybeat breakthrough and global domination to break-up.
Not that many of the tensions which caused the disintegration of the world’s most popular beat combo are evident on stage. Any animosity between the onstage John Lennon and Paul McCartney is restricted to the odd acerbic comment and childish face-pulling behind Macca’s back. But then John Maher’s production is more about a collective celebration than a picking over of old wounds. And this is sensible when you consider that what most audiences for this kind of show are after is a polished and professional feel-good singalong.
And it is in this respect that Let It Be really delivers. With a show so built around its songs, the process of selecting from the Beatles’ unequalled back catalogue – which, spread across just eight years, remains unmatched in its progression, experimentation and shear diversity – is key. Not surprisingly, it is from the more popularist end of the band’s songbook that the selections derive – no room for oddities and game-changers like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ or ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’.
But while McCartney’s sunnier output dominates, particularly towards the end – although you can’t really argue with a closing triptych of ‘Back in the USSR’, ‘Let It Be’ and a roof-raising ‘Hey Jude’ – the production still finds time to recognise George Harrison’s underrated songwriting contribution to the band – with, on the night this reviewer was in the audience, John Brosnan doing the ‘quiet Beatle’ justice in both voice and guitar-playing, particularly in a truly showstopping ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
With their stick-on moustaches and hastily adorned wigs, the cast is in danger of putting you in mind of Eric Idle’s 1970s Beatles spoof The Rutles. And while you could say that this show is a licence to print money, in the end, the production’s most primary concern is showcasing the Beatles’ musical achievements. And it does that with an admirable and entirely uncynical conviction. So in that respect you’d be best advised to turn off your preconceptions, relax and let the wave of unashamedly positive goodwill wash over you. Or, to put it another way – and echoing some of the last lyrics that the Beatles ever committed to record – this show proves that the love you take is very much equal to the love you make.
Chris Bartlett
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