Calam Lynch in Please Please Me [Mark Senior]
PLEASE PLEASE ME
Kiln Theatre
☆☆☆
Brian Epstein (Calam Lynch), the Beatles manager, was often called the Fifth Beatle. Tom Wright’s bittersweet play Please Please Me shifts the focus to his personal life. A gay Jewish man at a time when homosexuality was criminalised and anti-Semitism rife, he was forced to keep his identity hidden.
One key scene is the night Epstein spent with John Lennon (an assured stage debut from Noah Ritter) in a shared hotel room in Torremolinos in April 1963. Epstein was drawn to his masculine swagger and charm, and Wright suggests an intimate encounter between them – something Lennon later hinted at.
The play also explores Epstein’s relationship with the sole female artist he managed, Cilla Black (Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who also plays Aunt Mimi and Cynthia).
Wright charts Epstein’s ascent from running the record department in his father’s Liverpool furniture shop to becoming one of the most famous pop managers of all time, before his struggles with drug addiction and early death in 1967. I yearned for some Beatles songs, but instead David Shrubsole’s upbeat score marks the passing of time in Amit Sharma’s understated staging.
Lynch gives a compelling performance, yet Wright only fleetingly touches on pivotal moments in Epstein’s short life – his first meeting with Lennon, the Beatles’ breakthrough, Cynthia’s pregnancy, and the infamous “more popular than Jesus” remark – rather than building a cohesive narrative.
Sharma’s production picks up pace in the second half and the drama takes off. It’s uneven, but the thrilling performances ensure we remain invested in this well-trodden story.
Until May 29
kilntheatre.com/
