Let it Be

TNT

More work seems to have gone into the pre-show and interval Q & A’s projected on the mock 60s TV screens flanking the stage than on the construction of this so-called musical.

With barely a dozen lines of spoken dialogue during the course of the whole evening (and that’s probably being generous) this tribute show is basically a more-or-less chronological string of Beatles hits with the Fab Four’s sartorial development charted by changes of costume and wigs (some disastrous – the busby-sporting Paul I saw looked, at one point, as though he’d been recruited from sentry duty at Buckingham Palace and hadn’t had time to remove his headgear).

The songs, though, are ageless, and the cast (five selected each performance from a batch of eleven – the extra one, clad in black, shakes his tambourine stashed away in an upstage corner) does a very decent job of demonstrating the talented versatility of the mop-haired Liverpudlians to the younger members of the audience whilst taking the grey-haired oldies for a trip down memory lane as background projections recall pyschedelia, flower power, anti-Vietnam protests and, earlier, the hysteria of the massive Shea Stadium gig in 1965.

And the cringe-making TV adverts of the period are a hoot. Locked firmly in the past, they make a diverting contrast to the way in which the music of John, Paul George and Ringo developed from the early days of “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love “ to the later, more poignant “Eleanor Rigby,” “Hey Jude” and the eponymous “Let it Be.”

Prince of Wales , Coventry Street, W1D 6AS
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
To 19th January 2013
£20- £60LetItBeLondon.com