Last Updated on April 24, 2026
A sensitive portrait of an unsung pioneer
5.0 out of 5.0 starsBeatlemania is going through a revival. Peter Jackson’s Get Back, a documentary following the creation of the band’s final studio album, came out to critical acclaim in 2021. And there’s a buzz over Sam Mendes’s upcoming Four-Film Cinematic Event, which dedicates a feature-length biopic to each member of the band. It’s hard for an artist to say something new through the voices of The Beatles, so Tom Wright’s new play Please Please Me doesn’t try.
It’s a biopic about the band’s visionary manager, Brian Epstein. It tells an incisive, emotionally nuanced story of a man for whom The Beatles were an inner compass, guiding his life and love. The play stands back from the group itself (we never meet Paul, George or Ringo), instead exploring Epstein’s inner and outer turbulences – the strains and joys of his homosexuality, his desire for success, his loyalties and friendships, his loneliness. Please Please Me uses the echoes of as a massive culture phenomenon to tell a new story. This time the Beatles are the subtext and Brian is the star.
We meet Epstein in the early 1960s at his family’s music store in Liverpool. He’s a gifted salesman, in touch with youth culture, the Elvis-loving counterpart to his father’s taste for Mendelssohn. Already his sexuality is churning up his professional life. You’ve “dragged [our name] through the gutter” shouts his father after one of Epstein’s lovers shames young Brian on the shop floor, demanding a payout.
From here, Please Please Me spins through flashpoints in Epstein’s life. His first time seeing The Beatles at the Cavern Club; his reinvention of the band’s scruffy image; his ambiguous encounter with John Lennon in a Spanish hotel; his longstanding bond with Cilla Black; and his spiral into addiction and despair. Amit Sharma’s (Badhaai Ho) styled transitions between scenes create a genuine sense of time-lapse.
Tom Wright’s (I Ain’t Dumb) writing is precise and self-assured. There was an alternative version of the play – one where its expansive subject matter (the hippie movement, wild fandom, drugs) ballooned around the plot. But Please Please Me never drifts into documenting these social phenomena. Instead, it builds the critical threads of Epstein’s life into a careful plot. It humanises cultural giants – namely Epstein, Lennon and Black – into adolescents pulled apart by experimentation, naivety and creative drive.
Calam Lynch (What It Feels Like for a Girl) is outstanding as Brian. He blends upright Englishness with self-conscious patter, entrepreneurial spark with chronic uncertainty. Lynch electrifies the relation between Epstein and Lennon. In every scene, he inhabits a man ruptured by adoration and self-restraint. As Epstein spirals into destructive drug use, Lynch flips from weeping uncontrollably to make-believe serenity. He paints a colourful portrait of a man unable to root himself in a frantic world.
Noah Ritter’s (Running Man) John Lennon is no less convincing. In his professional stage debut, he expertly captures Lennon’s warm, bouncy voice and confident swagger. He is an imposing force in the play – a centre of gravity about which the other characters rotate. Together, Lynch and Ritter tell an uneven love story of two men structured by each other’s feelings. For Brian, it’s a lethal game.
William Robinson (Bacon), Arthur Wilson (Here There are Blueberries) and Eleanor Worthington-Cox (Mary Page Marlowe) multi-role around Lynch and Ritter, playing everyone from anxious parents to controlling aunts, spurned lovers to concerned friends. Together, they bring the high-stakes showbiz world to life. They all give dynamic performances that enliven the central narrative.
Please Please Me is not the kind of biopic that tries to give definitive portrayals of well-known figures. It offers a fractured love story in the half-spaces between fiction and truth. Beatles fans will adore it, but its themes are universal and profound. It’s a challenging story with relevance for all.
Please Please Me runs at the Kiln Theatre from 21st of April to 29th May.
Kiln Theatre
Kilburn High Road
London
NW6 7JR
Check out London Theatre Previews, January – July 2026 – Off West End
Leave a Reply