Review: Come Together at Liverpool Royal Court ****

If Lennon and McCartney were essentially (as Come Together explains) “two lads from Liverpool, friends, brought together by fate – at a fête”, then Mark Newnham and Tom Connor were two lads brought together in Liverpool by the Royal Court.

The actors played a young John and Paul in the theatre’s 2013 production of Bob Eaton’s Lennon, and reprised their roles the following year.

If they clicked in the rehearsal room, outside the theatre’s walls they formed so close a bond they now even live in adjoining towns, while in the intervening decade they have also played various incarnations of the fab two in a variety of shows and tribute bands.

Last year they reunited to perform Eaton and Mark McGann’s Two of Us on the Royal Court stage – the limited run proving so popular it was surely a no brainer to reform and return.

This time however, and with the Beatles’ vast catalogue firmly under belts, the pair of actor-musos have opted to write and perform their own tribute, albeit remaining under director Eaton’s expert eye and with a return for the accomplished four-piece backing band who add extra musical oomph to the show.

Inevitably, given the course of real-life history, it follows a similar narrative arc to Two of Us, from that fateful meeting at Woolton Church Fête to the fallings out and implosion of the post-Brian Epstein Beatle world.

While some Beatle shows seek to replicate the pair down to the last cough, spit, vocal inflection and way they tie their laces, Newnham and Connor’s piece is more in the spirit of rather than an exact facsimile of the songwriting geniuses.

Saying that, Connor has always had a distinct boyish McCartney look about him, while Newnham has grown appreciably into Lennon’s later long-haired, round glasses look.

Above: Mark Newnham as John Lennon. Top Newnham (right) and Tom Connor as Paul McCartney. Photos by Andrew AB Photography.

He also captures nicely Lennon’s deadpan sense of the absurd, while Connor channels McCartney’s dry humour, both in their inter-Beatle bantz and their direct storytelling engagement with their audience.

But of course, Come Together is essentially about the music the two motherless teenagers-come-global superstars created together. And, increasingly, apart.

It’s music that has formed the soundtrack to hundreds of millions of lives. Rather like Shakespearean words and phrases, these songs have entered the shared cultural sphere and even if you’re not a Beatles fan, their lyrics and melodies inevitably spring, fully formed, into your brain and out of your mouth.

Put simply, they’re a familiar part of the fabric of our everyday existence.

The phrase goes that familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe for a few naysayers, but for the rest of us it perhaps breeds a sort of complacency about Lennon and McCartney’s songs. And we also inevitably see them through the prism of subsequent developments in popular music over the intervening decades.

Come Together reminds us how viscerally exciting it must have felt to hear the raw energy of numbers like Please Please Me when they burst on to the music scene 60-odd years ago. And how revolutionary the Beatles really were – how those developments in pop music may either not have happened, or have looked and sounded quite different, if it hadn’t been for those lads from Liverpool.

Above: Tom Connor as Paul McCartney performing Let It Be. Photo by Andrew AB Photography.

Newnham and Connor weave a path through the partnership’s songwriting progression in a series of ‘chapters’, hitting many of the expected landmarks on the way (including I Wanna Hold Your Hand in four languages), but also offering a few more unexpected numbers – the unreleased 1969 track Because I Know You Love Me So, All My Loving and Julia for example.

Each takes a solo moment in the spotlight – Connor with Yesterday, Newnham’s In My Life, while vocally, both seem to get stronger as the show progresses, tearing through the rockiness of a grooving I Got a Feeling, Don’t Let Me Down, and Get Back, and nailing those trademark Everly Brothers-inspired Beatle harmonies from Love Me Do to Let It Be and beyond.

While Newnham plays guitar throughout, Connor makes a decent job of appearing to play bass ‘upside down’ – with actor Adam Keast taking up the sonic slack behind. When it comes to playing live, Connor swaps to a right-handed strung instrument. Both actor-musos take their turn at the piano.

Meanwhile Ben Gladwin adds bright backing vocals, percussion and keyboard support, Greg Joy returns on drums and (you might think ironically) Mike Woodvine is an unsung George Harrison-style lead guitarist.

It’s not the glossiest and slickest of Beatle stage shows, but the touch of roughness around the edges gives it an endearing warmth and a sense of intimacy. It’s heartfelt and never less than entertaining.

While A Day in the Life’s 24-bar orchestral crescendo and thundering piano chord creates a satisfying punctuation mark to the first half, Newnham and Connor opt to end the second in Abbey Road medley fashion.

But like Abbey Road, there’s a little extra in the offing after the ‘and in the end’ with an understated rendition of ‘last Beatles song’ Now and Then followed by a crowd-pleasing singalong Hey Jude to send their audience home on an endorphin high.