Beatle matriarchs take centre stage in new play at Liverpool's Unity

December 1961 was an eventful one for four lads from Liverpool.

The month started with a meeting in the office at NEMS in Whitechapel where its young executive Brian Epstein proposed managing their band, and ended with their old school pal Neil Aspinall driving them to London for an audition with Decca.

In between they played the Cavern, the Tower Ballroom – and a famously disastrous gig in Aldershot with fewer than 20 in the audience, and enjoyed their first official photo session.

So that’s what The Beatles (John, Paul, George and still at that time Pete Best) were up to. But what about their nearest and dearest during this pivotal time?

December 1961 is also the backdrop for Mona and Mimi, a new stage piece from first-time playwright Catherine Leen which is receiving its premiere at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre next month and which imagines a meeting between the two Beatle matriarchs – Mona Best and ‘Aunt’ Mimi Smith – who have very different vision of their lads’ futures.

“It’s such a different lens,” explains director – and self-confessed Beatle enthusiast - Nick Bagnall of Leen’s approach.

“One of the things that drew me to it was that I knew nothing about Mona Best. I had no idea about how extraordinary she was and how fundamental she was to the beginning of The Beatles’ journey. And looking at the beginning of The Beatles’ story through the lens of that woman became really fascinating to me.”

Being a dad to a small person, he was also attracted by “the idea of motherhood, as well as dreams and ambitions, and this beginning of something that’s going to be phenomenal.”

Above: Catherine Leen with director Nick Bagnall in rehearsals. Photo courtesy of the Mona and Mimi production team.

Mona Best, for the uninitiated, was the youthful, vibrant, forward-thinking and keenly entrepreneurial mother of Beatles’ drummer Pete and it was at the Casbah, the coffee bar she opened in the basement of the Best’s West Derby home, that the band enjoyed its earliest gigs, setting a course to eventually climb to ‘the toppermost of the poppermost’. A teenage Lennon et al even helped decorate the Casbah’s ceiling.

Most people will know about Mimi meanwhile, the aunt who, along with his Uncle George, raised Lennon from the age of five at their comfortable suburban home on Menlove Avenue.

Mona and Mimi – billed as ‘a story of sacrifice and resilience’ – sees an imagined meeting between the pair, and as tensions rise over a looming music contract, surprising parallels between these very different women emerge as they find themselves unexpectedly confronting their own pasts, ambitions and regrets.

The real-life women came from different generations (Mimi was 16 years older than Mona) and very different viewpoints, and looking from the vantage point of the 21^st Century, it’s perhaps easier to empathise with Mona’s forward-facing outlook rather than the more conventional and reserved Mimi’s concerns.

But Bagnall is keen to stress that Lennon’s guardian isn’t short-changed in the show.

Above: In the rehearsal room for Mona and Mimi. Photo courtesy of the production team.

“There’s a warmth and a generosity to how Catherine has placed Mimi in the world that’s kind of brilliant,” he says. “They both come from very different places, not just spatially but philosophically, and Mimi, I’ve fallen in love with, because I absolutely get where she’s coming from.

“We give her a voice, which I’m actually trying to dig out a bit more in rehearsals.

“There’s also the connection between them. Even though they come from very extreme places, what’s interesting about the piece is the moments they connect and the moments when they become very similar, and that’s to do with them being mums.”

Although ostensibly a two-hander, there is a third character who enters the action, briefly, during the play – the aforementioned Aspinall, who lodged with the Bests and, as Beatles fans know, became particularly close to Mona.

Meanwhile Leen is producing as well as being the writer, and Bagnall is full of praise for the oral historian-turned-playwright.

He says: “What’s been brilliant in the rehearsal room is bouncing off one another with that historian head she’s got, and also me trying to make a piece of theatre which hopefully has some impact. She’s learning an awful lot about how to get a story on its feet, and it’s really gorgeous to see her response to actors making her words live. It’s a new thing for her.

“To see her buzzing. To be excited by that dynamic in the room. It’s life affirming actually.”

Mona and Mimi is at the Unity Theatre on September 3-4. Tickets HERE