Review: Come Together at Liverpool's Royal Court ****1/2

The Beatles juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down, seven decades after it first set off on the road to stardom and immortality.

Since Come Together – Tom Connor and Mark Newnham’s homage to Lennon and McCartney - was last staged at the Royal Court two years ago, Ian Leslie’s fab, and unexpectedly moving, book John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs has been published (if you haven’t read it, you really should).

Meanwhile, in the last few weeks, Sam Mendes has started filming on his quartet of big screen Beatle biopics, taking over the Lennon and McCartney homes and rolling back the decades at other nearby locations.

So, while there’s never a bad time to revisit one of the more brilliant and enduring songwriting partnerships of the 20^th Century, this latest run of the charming Come Together seems particularly apt.

And Connor and Newnham get a deservedly warm welcome in what has surely become their spiritual home.

It was here in the Lennon rehearsal room that the two of them first met and struck it off, with Newnham playing a young John and Connor an uncanny Paul.

Lennon and McCartney’s musical collaboration lasted 13 years, from Woolton Church Fete in 1957 to the Beatles’ acrimonious break-up in 1970, and funnily enough it’s also now 13 years since that production of Bob Eaton’s play.

But happily, the two actors appear to still be going (very) strong. And indeed, after this March residency at Roe Street they are taking Come Together on a mini-UK tour.

Eaton also remains part of their solo concern, directing the show which started life in 2023 under the title Two of Us.

Although it’s technically ‘six of us’ on stage, with Ben Gladwin (keys, harmonica and all sorts), Mike Woodvine (guitar – a George Harrison in all but name), Adam Keast (bass, bolstering Connor's visually-accurate but not necessarily virtuoso left-hand playing) and Greg Joy (drums) returning to give the show plenty of musical heft. They make for an impressively tight combo.

Above: Mark Newnham as John Lennon. Top: Newnham with Tom Connor as Paul McCartney. Photos by Andrew AB Photography.

Come Together essentially explores Lennon and McCartney’s partnership from their first meeting as teenagers to the final chords of Abbey Road (and indeed a little beyond), a chronology of their writing relationship and its progression from those intense early days picking out tunes and honing Everly Brothers-like harmonies in porches, gardens and the McCartney bathroom at Forthlin Road (excellent acoustics) to sitting face to face on hotel room beds, to bringing their own separately created songs to the EMI studios to be worked on and finessed.

Alongside their pick from Lennon and McCartney’s prodigious, brilliant catalogue of songs, Connor and Newnham have crafted a wry, spry script, sprinkled with humour and pathos and to which Connor brings McCartney’s cheery optimism while Newnham clearly relishes giving voice to Lennon’s dry and cynical side.

Still, Come Together not only examines the changing relationship between the two lads from South Liverpool who were “brought together by fate – at a fete” and happened to make it very, very big, but also reveals the close and evidently very warm bond between the two actor-musos.

Ultimately though, it’s the music which really speaks. When I interviewed them a few years ago, Connor described the show as “like ‘an evening with’ that you can’t go to’.” And the audience certainly gets plenty of Beatles bang for its buck – from Because I Know You Love Me So (written back in 1958) to The End with Paul’s poignant sign off couplet: “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make”.

Above: Paul McCartney (Tom Connor) sings Let It Be. Photo by Andrew AB Photography.

In between, there are blistering performances of Hamburg standards and Beatlemania classics (I Wanna Hold Your Hand is performed progressively in German, Swedish, French and English), a ballsy Day Tripper, and later on, Paperback Writer and Revolution.

But there are also quiet and restrained moments, including McCartney’s plaintive Yesterday (“Paul would only have to bend over to tie his shoelace, and a tune would pop out of his arse” Newnham’s John jokes) and Let It Be, Lennon's reflective Julia and the lovely, affecting introspection of an acoustic In My Life.

Things get psychedelic after the interval as the Beatles flail around, rudderless following Brian Epstein’s death, looking for purpose and musical and spiritual inspiration, while the return to ‘basics’ in the band’s final year creates a lovely atmosphere of friends just enjoying jamming in the studio together.

It all leads inexorably to the rooftop in Savile Row, the band’s short set – the throat-wrecking I’ve Got a Feeling, a delicious harmonising Don’t Let Me Down, I Dig a Pony and Get Back - evocatively recreated by the whole cast (Joy pops on Ringo’s red plastic mac, Newnham shrugs into a shaggy coat and Gladwin channels his inner Billy Preston), and then on to the final break-up, a spot of Now and Then, and a singalong bonus encore prompting a sponteneous lighting of dozens of mobile phones.