Theater Review—

Broadway Bound Beatles Show Serves Two Disparate Audiences

By Julie Stern

BRIDGEPORT — She Loves You!, the tribute to The Beatles currently on stage at Bridgeport’s Downtown Cabaret Theater (before it heads to Broadway), serves two disparate audiences in different ways. For those of us who were actually there to remember the sixties, the show brings back a feast of memories- not just of the Fab Four, but also of the times that were, as Dylan told us, “a changin.’”

For later generations, it is more of a “magical mystery tour” that simulates the experience of being present at a series of actual concerts, beginning with the group’s 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, and ending five years later.

Surrounding a bare stage, director and scenic designer Andrew Empson and media designer John Brosnan have mounted an evocative montage of the era, alternating sappy commercials for detergents and pickles, with shots of excited studio audiences filled with masses of bouffant hairdos, followed by black and white coverage of the outside world — Civil Rights marches, anti-war demonstrations, hippie love-ins, and funerals for assassinated martyrs — interspersed with mobs of screaming teenage fans.

Performers Alan LeBoeuf (Paul McCartney) and David Leon (John Lennon) come to the show as veterans of the Broadway hit Beatlemania. In addition, John Brosnan (George Harrison) and Carmine Grippo (Ringo Starr) have had extensive experience re-creating their characters as well.

Using authentic vintage costumes, ranging from the black suits and narrow lapels of their initial appearance, through the gorgeously ornate uniforms of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, to the guru inspired white outfits, long hair and granny glasses of their dalliance with new age imagery, the quartet aims for absolute head to toe re-creation of a cultural phenomenon. When things got psychedelic, colored smoke billowed up to fill the room, as they sang “I get high with the help of my friends…”

And of course the most important feature of the show is the actual music. Divided into two acts — 1964 to 1966 and 1967 to 1969 — the show runs over two hours and entails the live performance of thirty songs by these four very talented musicians. They include many with that strong distinctive beat that the boys from Liverpool brought over to America — “Please, Please Me,”  “All My Lovin,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand”  — as well as some of the most powerful ballads — “Hey Jude,” “Let it Be,” “In My Life” — and above all, the greatest of the Lennon-McCartney collaborations, “Yesterday.” Even the Yellow Submarine is present in the form of a film clip of the cartoon.

By the end of the show, audience members of all ages were dancing in the aisles, and many more of them were right next door, discreetly beating time on the nearest hard surface.

(Performances continue until April 13 at Downtown Cabaret Theatre, 263 Golden Hill Street in Bridgeport. Call 203-576-1636 for details about performances and tickets.)