Review: Please Please Me (Kiln Theatre)

Review by Daz Gale

⭐️⭐️

You don’t have to look too far to find any amount of material on The Beatles, with new documentaries regularly popping up, and four films being made simultaneously - one for each member of the legendary group. But what about the man who guided them to success and is often referred to as the fifth Beatle? It is easy to overlook Brian Epstein and the impact he had on making John, Paul, George and Ringo four of the biggest musicians of all time, but a new play hopes to right that wrong with the premiere of Please Please Me at London’s Kiln Theatre. With a lot of affection surrounding this project, would “All You Need Is Love” ring true for this play, or would it be crying out for a little Help?

Please Please Me immediately transports us into the world of Brian Epstein as he moves from working in a record store to finding The Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and going on to manage them. Determined to make the Fab Four the most famous group on the planet, history tells us his ambitious plans and vision for them worked. Sadly, their rise would lead to his fall, and as he loses himself among addiction, while struggling with his own sexuality, it would be a life that was tragically too short-lived. This play attempts to shine a light on his secret struggles and finally puts the fifth Beatle front and centre.

There is a lot of promise to be found in a story about Brian Epstein, with sexuality and addiction two huge topics that could be explored in great detail to attempt to make sense of the man behind the Beatles, and what led to his tragic death aged just 32. Unfortunately, Please Please Me squanders that through some questionable material that reduces Epstein to a caricature of an individual. Using artistic licence to imagine what his relationship with John Lennon might have been, it comes across as fan fiction rather than a cohesively told story.

The writing is by far the biggest problem with Please Please Me, feeling both underwritten and underdeveloped and nowhere near ready. It felt as if I was watching a workshop as opposed to a finished production. Dialogue was frequently unnatural and often cliched with some clumsy lines and shocking lines thrown in, with “No good blowjob goes unpunished” a prime example of the quality, or lack thereof. The play lacked any nuance and subtlety, opting to go too heavy-handed with everything at the expense of the material. The play was also rife with homophobia - yes, you can argue this is necessary given the subject matter, and the need to have Epstein’s sexuality form a prominent part of the story, but how much is too much? The play opts to use an excessive amount of f-slurs to refer to Epstein to the extent that it made me uncomfortable and occasionally wince. Slurs like that can add to the material, but I would argue they are more effective when they are used sparingly. Their frequent and excessive use reduced any impact, adding absolutely nothing to the dialogue apart from their desire to be included for the sake of it, and ended up coming across as mean-spirited more than anything else.

Please Please Me also suffers from bad timing due to Brian Epstein’s unfortunate surname. Now, of course, he is of no relation to that other Epstein who still dominates the news to this day, so what relevance does that have to this review, aside from sheer coincidence and me clutching at straws? Well, it seems that the connection is being alluded to from the moment the play opens, with an early line mentioning “enjoying the Epstein experience” - enough to make anyone form an unlikely connection, amplified by the following line mentioning both a “Mendelson” (close enough) and a “Geoffrey”. As these are real figures, it could just be very unfortunate, but I couldn’t help wondering if the writer had deliberately put these references together as a knowing nod? It was incredibly misguided either way. Either the writer, Tom Wright, didn’t pick up on these comparisons, or he included them as a joke, doing himself a disservice in his writing by not ensuring quality control. The fact that at one point a character says, “Authorities would love to make an example of you with a name like Epstein” leads me to believe Wright knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps if this were an hour-long comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe, it would be better received, but as part of a play like this, it falls incredibly flat.

Though the bones in Please Please Me are hard enough to salvage, Amit Sharma’s direction doesn’t help matters. The play suffers from poor pacing, coming across as lifeless at times. This is most felt in slow transition scenes, killing all momentum. Questionable choices plague the play, such as Cilla Black walking onto the stage to perform, only to dance and mime to absolute silence. Very jarring. There is a lot of sexual tension filling Please Please Me, notably in the relationship between Brian and John. Though the intimacy of the piece is well coordinated, it feels like the art of any subtlety suffers from the presence of perpetual horniness.

For a play titled Please Please Me, you would expect some Beatles to be present. Well, you get one. Paul, George and Ringo are nowhere to be found, occasionally referenced but never glimpsed. While the relationship between Brian and John forms the bulk of the story, their absence is notable, especially in the moments when John is performing on stage, seemingly as a solo artist. Fittingly, given one of his biggest solo hits, audiences have to imagine the others, though it feels like having three ensemble cast members to bulk it out would have given The Beatles a much bigger presence. Similarly, their music is completely absent from the play. I imagine this may be to do with a licensing issue, but again, the absence is felt. The random music that plays throughout instead of Beatles songs feels at odds with the story and again led me to believe this was a show still in need of further development, and this current presentation was more a stopgap as opposed to the finished product.

Though the writing was the biggest problem in the play, and the direction didn’t fare much better, Please Please Me was still pleasing to look at. Tom Piper’s set design has some moments of beauty with simple transformations, though it is at its most impressive when it recreates the iconic Cavern Club. There are some decent moments in sound design from David Shrubsole, though the composition didn’t quite reach the same standard as The Beatles' songbook, but then again, what does? 

The biggest strength in Please Please Me is its talented cast. Calam Lynch did the best he could with the material he was given in a solid turn as Brian, demonstrating star power and attempting to find some natural order in the extremities his character was given. Lynch embodied the role to the best anyone could in these circumstances, with a great use of movement that revealed the wild and unpredictable nature of the character. It is a testament to Lynch that an unplanned moment where he dropped the phone, resulting in an ad-lib, was the funniest moment of the play, though there is also a concern that an off-the-cuff remark like that can prove better than the actual material. Making his professional debut, Noah Ritter has the unenviable task of stepping into the shoes of John Lennon, but does so with ease in an assured performance that again showed Ritter was stronger than the material he was given.

William Robinson and Arthur Wilson appear throughout in a variety of roles, but it is Eleanor Worthington-Cox who, unsurprisingly, steals the show, as she tends to always have a habit of doing. A brief turn as Aunt Mimi and her role as John’s wife Cynthia gives her the chance to shine her star, but it is her time as Cilla Black that truly wows. The greatest moments of the play are those when Worthington-Cox is embodying Cilla, even delivering a refreshingly welcome performance of ‘You’re My World’ to kick off Act Two - it is moments like this that show what Please Please Me could have done had it been further developed. At times, it feels like Worthington-Cox is in a completely different show, but that works in her favour as her Cilla is undoubtedly the best thing about this play. If they ever bring the musical Cilla back to the stage, casting directors need to look no further for their leading lady.

From the moment Please Please Me was announced, I was hugely excited. Given the consistently strong programming at the Kiln, and my own love of all things music history, I was keen to see this story of a great, troubled and tragic man. Unfortunately, I left the theatre incredibly disappointed. In its current form, I’m sorry to say this play is nowhere near good enough. The writing is in desperate need of a lift to allow characters to feel fully formed and natural, while some of the questionable dialogue should be cut altogether. The themes of sexuality and addiction require much more sensitivity and exposition than is present here, with Epstein’s entire story seemingly reduced to bullet points. I got the impression that Please Please Me had no idea what it was trying to say, and if it did know, it failed in its attempt to do so. Whether this can get a further life in a better version in the future remains to be seen, but judging from the disappointing play I witnessed, it may be best to just Let It Be.

Please Please Me plays at Kiln Theatre until 29th May. Tickets from https://allthatdazzles.londontheatredirect.com/play/please-please-me

Photos by Mark Senior