Review: Girls Don't Play Guitars at Liverpool's Royal Court ****1/2
When Ian Salmon’s Girls Don’t Play Guitars was first staged at the Royal Court back in 2019, few people had heard of The Liverbirds or knew their story.
Five years on, the group has planted a Liverbirds-shaped flag in the pages of pop history as Britain’s first all-female rock and roll outfit, not only thanks to the Royal Court show but also through subsequent TV interviews, news stories and, most recently, their own published autobiography and anthology CD.
What hasn’t changed – well, mostly – is the line-up of this rousing stage musical.
Eight of the 10 original 2019 cast have returned for its post-Covid revival, including all four of the Liverbirds themselves. And like the real Pam, Val, Mary and Sheila, it appears the brilliant actor-muso quartet have become a similarly tight band of sisters.
Salmon’s story about the four feisty female pioneers who emerged in the midst of the Sixties Merseybeat scene is penned with a straight biopic bat, taking us from uncertain beginnings in front rooms and basement clubs of early 1960s Liverpool to life on the road, success and what happened afterwards, told by the Liverbirds themselves in fourth wall breaking fashion and played out in a burst of short, sharp, music-filled scenes.
These were teenagers who weren’t prepared to accept ‘no’ including, crucially, ignoring a sardonic John Winston Lennon who dismissed their ambitions by telling budding bassist Mary McGlory that “girls don’t play guitars”.
Mark Newnham, returning to the Royal Court stage as Lennon (along with partner in crime Tom Connor reprising his uncanny McCartney) delivers the putdown with requisite nasal twang.
Mary (Alice McKenna) wasn’t to be deterred however, either by Lennon or her eye-rolling father, and when searing guitarist Val (Molly-Grace Cutler, last in Liverpool as a brilliant Carole King at the Empire) and young drummer Sylvia (Sarah Workman) sought her out, the nucleus of The Liverbirds was born. Ballsy singer-guitarist Pam (Lisa Wright) completed the line-up while the group was out on the road supporting a pre-fame Stones and The Kinks in venues up and down the country.
They’re just a couple of the household names (all played by the six-strong male ensemble) who whirl in and out of The Liverbirds’ orbit in Salmon’s tale.
Above: Val (Molly-Grace Cutler), Pam (Lisa Wright), Mary (Alice McKenna) and Sylvia (Sarah Workman). Top: The cast of Girls Don't Play Guitars. Photos by Atanas Paskalev
But what turns the normal Swinging Sixties music narrative on its head is that all the usual suspects – Lennon and McCartney, Mick Jagger, Ray and Dave Davies (Newnham reprising his turn as the unpredictable ‘Dave the Rave’ first seen in Sunny Afternoon), Brian Epstein, Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix to name just a few, are but supporting artists to the girl group’s story.
Many of them helped the band, directly or indirectly, on the way. So, too, incidentally did a certain peroxide-haired, cigar-waggling disgraced DJ, while another music unmentionable (stage name rhymes with ‘titter’) was an annoyance when the quartet headed for the bright lights of Hamburg’s Grosse Freiheit after choosing Manfred Weissleder’s Star-Club over Brian Epstein’s management offer.
Lennon (ITMA) reputedly said: “I was born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg”, and this seems equally true for The Liverbirds who became stars of the Star-Club, caroused with fellow bands and got an Astrid Kirchherr makeover, toured Europe, supported Chuck Berry in West Berlin – practically upstaging him by defying his manager to play Berry’s own numbers, found love, suffered tragedy and heartache and came out the other end the stars of their own story.
Above: Girls DO Play Guitars. And Drums.
The action unfolds under music biopic veteran Bob Eaton’s expert direction and against the backdrop of Mark Walters’ brilliantly striking Ed Sullivan Show-style set which acts as ‘Cavern of Dreams’ (presided over by Jonathan Markwood’s urbane Bob Wooler), Star-Club (presided over by Markwood’s wily Weissleder) and all points in between.
Its focal point is a guitar-shaped performance dais, surrounded by a meteor shower of TV sets, amps and music cases. The design means there’s not a lot of room for manoeuvre, making for physically somewhat static storytelling.
But if movement is limited, the animation of the performances makes sure the tale rattles along - albeit never diving that far below the surface on its rollercoaster way.
It's punctuated by punchy musical numbers played with brio by both The Liverbirds and the versatile male ensemble who swap roles and instruments with equal and impressive ease. Everyone on stage has definitely got their mojo working.
“We were four girls who picked up guitars and drums and said: ‘watch us’,” Salmon’s Liverbirds conclude. Sixty years on, Girls Don’t Play Guitars makes sure we do just that – right up to its unexpected, uplifting, foot-stomping encore.
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