‘Backbeat’ recreates early Beatles
Cast of “Backbeat” by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys, directed by David Leveaux. Through March 1. Photo by Craig Schwartz When you die at age 21 you leave a lot of questions still drying on the clothesline. That’s what happened to Stuart Sutcliffe, the “fifth Beatle” whose love affair with Astrid Kirchherr is at the core of “Backbeat,” a play with music that’s onstage through March 1 at the Ahmanson Theatre. Adapted for the theater by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys, and based on Softley’s 1994 film of the same name, “Backbeat” recounts the formative years of the Fab Four when they were the (almost) Fab Five. Set between 1960 and 1963, most of the story takes place in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn (or red light district), where the young men traveled to hone their skills as a band. Surprisingly, two things that you’d think would matter a great deal do not really matter very much: The actors/musicians don’t closely resemble The Beatles in appearance, and the music they play (and this is true on the original cast album as well) isn’t exactly a spot-on recreation of the songs as we’ve come to know them. This would be disastrous for a Beatles tribute band, where note-for-note playing and…
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