Apart from Sir Paul McCartney himself, who criticised some factual inaccuracies, those who saw it rather liked Iain Softley’s 1994 film Backbeat. It covered The Beatles’s residency in a series of dodgy clubs in Hamburg from 1960 to 1962 and it foregrounded the story of Stu Sutcliffe, the so-called “fifth Beatle”.
The film was as much about the “love triangle” between John Lennon, Sutcliffe (Lennon’s best friend from art school) and Astrid Kirchherr, the young German photographer who fell in love with Sutcliffe, as it was about the music. But Softley says that the idea of a live version was born even before the film was finished. He wanted audiences to feel the excitement of those early live performances when the fab five, as they then were, were playing rock and roll covers with, as Softley says, all the energy of a 1970s punk band.
And here, more than 15 years later, is that live version. It is not opening in Liverpool, prior to the London transfer that its producers are so obviously hoping for, because the producers wanted somewhere slightly less obsessed by the Beatles to try it out. So a co-production with the Glasgow Citizens it is, although it was largely rehearsed in London and has almost no input from anyone in Glasgow
Still, Sutcliffe was born in Edinburgh and wherever it was made, this has the makings of a lively show. The whole thing needs to an extra layer, not to say several layers, of polish and finesse which, after all, is what out of town try-outs are for. And they need decided how to end it; should we not all be dancing in the aisles, as the cast were, to the lengthy closing medley? But some of the details area already spot-on.
Crucially, as with any musical, Softley (who directs as well as co-writing with Stephen Jeffreys, working from the original screenplay) seems to have got the shape of book about right. There is more about Sutcliffe’s painting than in the film, including some effective projections of paint thrown across the industrial steel panels which make up most of Christopher Oram’ effective set, which helps explain why Sutcliffe was never completely committed to the band.
The party to which Astrid and her then boyfriend invite the boys nicely captures the earnest, self-absorbed beatnik approach to pleasure. Isabella Calthorpe, as Astrid, all in black, blonde hair in a serious bob, is even more beautiful and enigmatic than the original.
No-one else is even pretending to look like their prototypes though Jamie Blackley captures something of the shy, retiring George Harrison and Alex Robertson makes a handsome and moody Sutcliffe. Andrew Knott is suitably gobby though perhaps a shade too yobby as Lennon and his singing voice is obviously under strain already. But otherwise the band is tight and the excitement is bubbling under.
Backbeat, Citizens, Glasgow, until 6 March
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