The two of you pleased pleased us.
It’s 60 years this month since the Beatles started laying down the songs that would launch them on the stratospheric life-long journey of fame and adulation.
That first album, Please Please Me, hit number one in the UK three months later and stayed there for 30 weeks. Reviewed at the time as “surprisingly good and up to standard”, Please Please Me stands as an important moment in the band’s history, capturing not only that raw Cavern spirit which subsequently captivated the world, but also because their producer George Martin, (the fifth Beatle?) realised what had come his way. Of the 14 tracks, eight were Lennon & McCartney originals.
The Beatles’ rise to fame is so well known how could the Two of Us at the Royal Court add to the already bulging Beatles’ canon of retrospectives and nostalgia?
The answer was simple: turn it into: “An audience with… John Lennon and Paul McCartney”. With such incredible source material, this Bob Eaton/Howard Gray production just lets the music (and some video backdrop) tell the story of the most successful songwriting duo of all time.
Two of Us explores Lennon and McCartney’s partnership from their first meeting as teenagers then to their break-up in 1970, using Lennon & McCartney hits as sign posts. So after the 1957 Woolton Village fete meeting, we are ‘in the studio’ hearing the likes of I Saw Her Standing There and Love Me Do, ‘experiencing’ the joy of their early song writing days, before I Wanna Hold Your Hand brought them their first American number 1 and global domination. As Mark Newnham’s John Lennon says: “The rest, as they say, is hysteria”.
Both he and Tom Conner as Paul – who bear uncanny resemblance to Lennon and McCartney – get to show off their own musical and vocal chops, playing solo on In My Life (I heard people in the audience sigh with pleasure) and Yesterday.
Their band – Ben Gladwin, Greg Joy, Adam Keast, Mike Woodvine – is outstanding in recreating perfectly so many of those songs that the world has claimed as its songbook over the last six decades. Close your eyes and you could have been at a Beatles concert, but without the screaming.
The production is in two halves, the first ending on a stunning rendition of A Day In The Life, marking the tragic early death of manager Brian Epstein, with the second opening with Magical Mystery Tour, which is what their lives had become as they slowly drifted apart.
There was little collaboration between John and Paul towards the end of the Beatles’ time together, bar the odd middle eight (A Day In The Life), lyrical suggestion (Hey Jude) or deputising for George and Ringo on recordings when they were absent, (The Ballad of John and Yoko), all of which are played here.
The finale is set on the roof of the Apple building in Savile Row, with our ‘Beatles’ dressing for the occasion and recreating that famous last live performance. While there may have been no encore for Lennon & McCartney, the Two of Us provides one with that perennial crowd pleasing singalong, Hey Jude.
Two of Us is a fascinating reminder of the parallel developments of these two Scouse geniuses who along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr changed the face of popular music (and Liverpool) forever.
It’s not a tribute act, but a tribute. Anyone who likes the Beatles should not miss this. Anyone who likes music should not miss this.
Two of Us at The Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool runs until 25 February.
Tickets from £15 available at What’s On – Royal Court Theatre (liverpoolsroyalcourt.com)
Jonathan Caswell
