Preview '05-'06: Imagine a New Jukebox Musical
Beginning in 1977, at Broadway's Winter Garden and Lunt-Fontanne Theatres, an attempt at a recreation of a Beatles concert played more than 1,000 performances, under the title Beatlemania. In 1982 at off-Broadway's Entermedia Theatre, there was, for a run of twenty-five performances, Bob Eaton's play with songs Lennon, in which all of the Beatles were depicted, and two actors Robert LuPone, David Patrick Kelly portrayed Lennon at different ages.
In Lennon, the first Broadway musical of the 2005-2006 season, the life story of John Lennon --from his birth in Liverpool in 1940 during a W.W. II blitz, to his death by gunshot in New York in 1980- is told using multiple Lennons. The new musical beginning previews at the Broadhurst Theatre this week features Will Chase, Chuck Cooper, Julie Danao, Mandy Gonzalez, Marcy Harriell, Chad Kimball, Terrence Mann, Julia Murney, and Michael Potts. These actors are of different genders, races, sizes, and shapes. But during the show's San Francisco tryout, all of them took turns playing Lennon. And these actors also played the many other characters depicted, from the Beatles to J. Edgar Hoover and Jerry Rubin. Also in San Francisco, the actors never left the stage, remaining as observers when not part of the central scene.
The $7.5 million Lennon uses something akin to story-theatre narrative devices. The actors come onstage as themselves, but also as story-tellers, about to enact scenes from Lennon's life. Ninety percent of the dialogue has been taken from Lennon's writings and from interviews that Lennon and wife Yoko Ono gave over the years. Ono has stated that the show's concept of multiple Lennons reflects Lennon's belief in the global village. Ono approved of the show's concept because it fit in with her husband's message of "one world, one people. John represented the whole human race, not just the white guys, and he was a very complex person who was not easy to cover with one guy."
The show's co-producer, director, and writer, Don Scardino, may be best known on Broadway for directing A Few Good Men, not to mention his appearances in such musical flops as King of Hearts, Angel and Park. Scardino specifically wanted to avoid the use of one actor as Lennon impersonator, and so chose the concept.
All of the performers are, of course, accomplished singers, as Lennon features thirty songs, composed between 1960 and 1980, from Lennon's career as a solo songwriter. Most of them were written after the Beatles disbanded, and apparently only one Lennon-Paul McCartney song "Give Peace a Chance" has been used. The songs, which include "Imagine," "Instant Karma," and "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," are accompanied by an onstage, ten-piece rock band, with Harold Wheeler Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels's orchestrations said to be authentic in sound.
Lennon offers an authorized version of its subject's life. Ono had to approve a script and a workshop presentation before the project could go forward and Lennon's song catalogue could be used. Once she gave her consent, she also gave the production two unrecorded, unpublished Lennon songs, "India, India" and "I Don't Want to Lose You," both premiered in Lennon. Unlike her husband, Ono is portrayed in the show by just one performer, Filipino-American Danao.
After this season's disastrous Good Vibrations and respectable All Shook Up, Lennon will be closely watched as the latest example of the jukebox musical. But this is a jukebox musical with a difference. It's not attempting, like Mamma Mia! and both of last season's shows, to fit songs into an original or fictional story. Instead, it's a show-biz biography that uses the songs of its subject, not unlike Buddy, The Boy from Oz, or A Class Act, shows which no one seemed to refer to as jukebox musicals.
Like The Boy from Oz, Lennon attempts to fit the subject's songs into scenes from his life. And as was the case with Peter Allen's songs in Oz, those involved with Lennon are fortunate that many of Lennon's post-Beatles compositions were personal.
As Scardino puts it, "We are absolutely not taking the songs out of context. These songs are telling the story they were meant to tell. John was like a diarist. His songs tell the story of his life." Adds co-producer Allen McKeown Jerry Springer: The Opera, "The songs have extra relevance when they are used in the context of John's life."
The spare set design by John Arnone is backed by three screens, upon which are seen slide and film projections, including photos, video clips, newsreels, and Lennon's own drawings. This is because Lennon is not content to simply tell the story of Lennon's life through his songs. It attempts to tell the story of an era, and to demonstrate how Lennon defined his times. As Scardino puts it, "The show is about the times in which he lived. It's a slice of history via the life of Lennon."
Because Ono had to approve the material, it's unlikely that the show would delve into such issues as Ono's rumored role in the breakup of the Beatles. And among the criticisms already leveled at Lennon is the fact that it gives short shrift to the Beatles years, concentrating more on Lennon's life with Ono.
The season's first two new musicals, Lennon and The Mambo Kings, both played tryout runs in San Francisco, increasingly popular since it hosted the world premiere of Wicked, not to mention the U.S. premiere of Mamma Mia! But reviews in San Francisco for Lennon were not particularly encouraging. In a reasonably promising notice in The Chronicle, Robert Hurwitt called the show "brightly creative, engagingly earnest, irreverent, sweet, informative, and funny....But it never fulfills the rich promise that hovers so tantalizingly just beyond its reach....several cuts above most of the animated songbook musicals that have flooded the field of late."
But in Variety, Phil Gallo described the show as "keeping the soul of the man at arm's length...only rarely capturing the unique style he brought to a song....none of the text penetrates the surface of Lennon."
Other reviewers were even more negative. In The Contra Costa Times, Pat Craig wrote, "Lennon's life appears to have been hijacked by the likes of Up With People and the other contemptible '60s choral music groups that attempted to make pop music palatable to moms and dads out there in TV land."
After the San Francisco reviews appeared, it was promptly decided that significant revision was necessary. So the second tryout stop, in Boston, was cancelled, with the down time devoted to rewrites, and the Broadway opening postponed from July 28 to August 4.
Michael Riedel in The New York Post mentioned that David Henry Hwang Aida, Flower Drum Song, Tarzan and Willy Russell had been approached for possible rewrites, but neither, it seems, ever got to work on Lennon. Instead, it appears that the only show doctor actually called in was none other than Bob Eaton, who wrote the '82 off-Broadway Lennon that lasted three weeks.
It has been reported, however, that the concept of nine performers playing Lennon has been rethought. The focus now appears to be on four male actors playing the title role, even if the women do occasionally take up Lennon's voice.