Epstein’s shadow: a stage play unearths lennon’s torment

At 30, Brian Epstein, the Beatles’s enigmatic manager, unleashed his story. Just twelve years later, his premature death cast a long, chilling shadow over the band’s trajectory. Tom Wright’s new play, ‘Please Please Me,’ isn’t a nostalgic portrait of mop-topped Liverpudlians; it’s a brutal excavation of the damage done – specifically, the corrosive effect on John Lennon.

A forbidden dance

We first encounter Epstein as a restless youth, swapping Bruch’s violin concerto for the raw energy of Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ in his father’s record shop. His father, surprisingly, encourages this burgeoning fascination with the baffling new world of 1960s pop – a poignant, almost absurd, moment. But the play swiftly reveals a darker truth: Epstein’s homosexuality, a source of shame and potential danger in 1960s Britain, casts a long, ominous pall over his ambitions.

Tom Piper’s ingenious mobile set – a chaotic tangle of spinning closets that evoke a record store and a menacing labyrinth – plunges the audience into a shadowy underworld. The Cavern Club, rendered as a claustrophobic stage, reinforces the sense of a life perpetually concealed and buried. It’s a world where even fleeting moments of connection are fraught with peril.

Epstein’s offer to the band, a heady cocktail of naivety, a desperate desire to succeed, and shrewd business acumen, feels almost tragically misguided. He becomes increasingly entangled in Lennon’s volatile genius, a force that threatens to consume him entirely. The infamous Torremolinos holiday – a period rife with speculation about an affair – becomes the play’s pivotal scene. Lennon vehemently denied the rumors, even resorting to violence when confronted, yet later offered a cryptic confirmation. This ambiguous episode, now meticulously dissected, fuels Brian’s descent into escalating desperation and a dangerous reliance on drugs.

Calam Lynch delivers a tour-de-force performance as Brian, his physicality intensifying with each scene, mirroring his spiraling decline. Eleanor Worthington-Cox is equally compelling, portraying a range of characters – from the stern Aunt Mimi to Cynthia Lennon and the shrewd Cilla Black – with nuanced precision. Noah Ritter, as John Lennon, captures the man’s chaotic charisma and unsettling cruelty, embodying a figure both adored and feared. As Beatlemania sweeps the globe, Lennon laments, ‘We are trapped by the very thing that set us free.’

Epstein’s tragedy isn't about fame or fortune; it's about a man who never escaped the confines of his own shame. The Kiln theatre production, until May 29th, offers a brutally honest and profoundly unsettling glimpse into the heart of a legend – and the devastating cost of his pursuit.