A STARTLING LOOK INTO THE BEATLE'S BACK-STORY

Written by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys and directed by award-winning David Leveaux, Backbeat is an adaptation of Softley's 1994 film with the same name, is about the birth of the Beatles but focuses on the fifth, 'lost' Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe. Dark and touching, this play with music is carefully crafted and surprisingly fresh, with a set that using sliding stages and panels and a projected video montage of striking paintings and imagery. Rather than another jukebox collective of Beatles' songs, Backbeat features a blazing score of rock 'n' roll classics, the covers that comprised the band's early sets, including 'Twist and Shout', 'Long Tall Sally', 'Money', 'Please Mr Postman' and 'Rock 'n' Roll Music'.

WHAT IS BACKBEAT ABOUT?

Backbeat tells of the Beatles' formative years, when five young Liverpudlian men - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe ? came together. Playing rock 'n' roll covers in the seedy bars of Reeperbahn, Hamburg's red light district, Sutcliffe falls in love with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr, a romance that soon becomes a tangle of jealousy, conflict and questionable loyalties between Sutcliffe, his best friend Lennon and Kirchherr.