Please Please Me is a play about Brian Epstein whose brief and troubled life remains relatively unknown. Tom Wright’s linear script opens with the teenage Epstein enjoying secret affairs with teddy boys while working at his dad’s record shop on Merseyside. When he spotted the Beatles at the Cavern, he was smitten by their homoerotic energy rather than their music or their potential for making tons of cash. He put them in suits to soften their image while encouraging their talent for witty backchat. ‘A little pinch of naughty but family friendly,’ was his branding message. But he lacked artistic vision and he cut a lousy deal to sell plastic Beatles dolls which cost the band a fortune and angered Paul McCartney. We don’t hear enough about these personality clashes because the show is very nearly a Beatle-free zone. Their music isn’t featured and Lennon is the only band member we meet.
What an odd creation. A Beatles show without the love
The story focuses on Epstein’s hopeless love life and his infatuation with Lennon who bullied him over his sexuality and his racial heritage. When Epstein was commissioned to write an autobiography, Lennon suggested the title Queer Jew. He seems to have wallowed in Lennon’s jibes and they had a brief affair, according to this play, at a hotel in Torremolinos while Cynthia was at home in England nursing the newborn Julian. Lennon offers a long list of pretexts for sleeping with Epstein: pity, physical curiosity, a disregard for social convention, a wish to explore the power dynamics of gay relationships. The surfeit of motives sounds a little strained. How many reasons does a man need? Later, they had a second tryst which Lennon explained more simply: ‘I wanted to prove I didn’t enjoy it.’
