Let It Be, a musical salute to The Beatles transferred from London, opens on Broadway July 24. I saw it in previews last Friday — until I walked out, wishing I could get even by writing my own opening-night review. So I will, using Beatles songs as my inspiration…
I was there with my kids, their respective spouses or fiancés, and a few close friends, all of us eager to enjoy this British import, subtitled A Celebration of the Music of The Beatles.
The enjoyment ended the second we entered the St. James Theatre, where the curtain was festooned with black-and-white TV screens showing the sort of trivia questions you get waiting for movies to start. (“What was John Lennon’s middle name?”)
The show started with a number, then another number, then another — with nothing in between. Early history, and the pre-Fab Four lineups with Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best, were nonexistent. On “Please Please Me,” the harmonica sound came from nowhere — certainly not from any of the four musicians on stage.
And by the way, that’s how the performers were billed in the Playbill. Not as John, Paul, George and Ringo. But as Graham Alexander (Musician), John Brosnan (Musician) and so on — 10 in all. I don’t know which ones we saw, or how many went on stage during the same show, because after a half-dozen songs, taking us through an unidentified Ed Sullivan Show mockup, we fled for the exit.
Broadway fare related somehow to television has been reviewed here at TV Worth Watching before — in our earliest days, I reviewed Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention, a fabulous play about one of the inventors of TV. And since so much of The Beatles’ history came to us through television, I’m considering an opening-night review of Let It Be to be fair game.
“The more you love the Beatles, the more you’ll hate Let It Be,” was my original reaction. Regular readers of this site, and even regular listeners to Fresh Air, are well aware of my love for those musicians and their group and individual accomplishments. But a simple cover-band karaoke compendium of songs, with nothing but costume changes to qualify as narrative? Somehow, it demanded more.
So that night, after seeing (part of) the show, my kids and their significant others and I sat around and tossed around Beatles song titles, altering them slightly for the occasion and imagining which of them would make the ultimate Let It Be review headline.
We finally decided there were enough contenders to comprise an entire review, not just the headline. Therefore, Mark and Jessica Bianculli, Kristin Bianculli and Roland Ochoa deserve some credit — or some blame — for what follows.
So here, for the record, is our communal take on the intrinsic artistic worth of Broadway’s new Let It Be — at least the less than half of it we could stand to sit through.
I hope it please, pleases you…
Ticket to Refund
Baby, You’re a Ripoff
Bad Evening Bad Evening
For You Boo
I’m Sleeping Through You
Leave Together
I Am the Walkout
While My Front Row Gently Weeps
It’s All Too Little
P.S. I Hate You
I’ll Follow the Exit
Got to Get You Out of My Head
You Never Give Me Your Money Back
Magical Mystery Bore
I’ve Just Seen a Waste
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Broadway Theatre
Got to Get You Out of My Head
Money Back (That’s What I Want)
Not a First Time
Can’t Act Naturally
You’re Gonna Lose That Lunch
Getting Worse
Happiness Is an Aisle Exit
Hey Bullcrap
She Loves You, No, No, No.
I’m Happy Just to Flee From You
Please Please Kill Me
You Won’t See Me
Let It Be. Really.