Please Please Me
Kiln Theatre, London
★★★☆☆
 

TOM WRIGHT’s Please Please Me showing at the Kiln is emphatically not a play about the Beatles. Rather, it’s an intimate piece that diverts attention from the dramatic explosion of creative energy that was the Beatles to the lived minutiae of the band’s manager Brian Epstein.

That Epstein was a closet gay is no secret. That he emerged from the repressive, post-war years, when homosexuality was illegal, sets the context. That he died alone from a drugs overdose at the age of 32 remains a shocking truth. But, while all this is charted in the play, his bigger impact as impresario is referenced only obliquely.

Indeed, the tragedy of Epstein’s tortured life can only be truly realised when set against his prowess as passionate devotee who stumbled across the Beatles, committed his life to them and flew them to the moon.

Missing from the play are all the Beatles (except for John Lennon) and, more significantly, the music (no-one can ever get the rights). Consequently, we can’t feel their impact; we are simply told of it. And Lennon’s hypothetical homosexual skirmish with Epstein, as played out here, is itself small beer compared with the power of the whole band.  

It’s a tender piece, though, with some definitive performances. Calam Lynch, in particular, excels as Epstein, capturing his radiant charm, his extreme vulnerability and his damaged self-respect all in one go: all soft, yielding conformism on the surface with charged sexuality and desperate longings lurking underneath. This could have been a towering role for the actor if the play had truly embraced the bigger picture as well as the small personal profile.

Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who plays three women in the play, particularly succeeds with Cilla Black. Her other roles as Aunt Mimi and Cynthia Lennon (costume changes a-plenty!) are somehow written as lesser beings — an unfortunate consequence of the period perhaps, that similarly garners distasteful homophobic laughs at Epstein’s shenanigans.  

Noah Ritter, though, makes a good fist of the multi-faceted, charismatic Lennon — not an easy role — and treads the line between caricature and personal truth with impressive ease, despite a distractingly imprecise haircut. 

Artistic director of the Kiln, Amit Sharma, must be complimented for his skilled staging, visual excitement and pacy scene shifts. Big mistake, though, in the current climate, to pronounce Epstein as rhyming with “mean”! For the British, it rhymed with “fine.” Why risk this connection to Jeffrey?

This is a justifiably affectionate tribute to a man who achieved so much so quickly and who tragically died, just as homosexuality was legalised and as Sergeant Pepper etched itself on the world.

But the drama could be bigger and bolder. Specifically, when the action leaps forward from 1963 to Lennon’s claim in 1966 that “the Beatles are bigger than Jesus,” we seem to have skipped half the play.

It’s a good production of a small play on a big theme. A kind and sympathetic view of Epstein too, and well performed, with a nod to a dynamic age.

Runs until May 29. Box office: (020) 7328-1000, kilntheatre.com.