Review: Shake it up Baby! at the Epstein Theatre ****

Liverpool playwright Ian Salmon returns to the streets of Hamburg, six years after the all-female Liverbirds rocked the Reeperbahn in his rousing musical biopic Girls Don’t Play Guitars.

This time however, it’s all about the lads. And not just any lads, but the four lads who shook the world.

That was all in the future however, because in 1959 Liverpool the teenage Beatles weren’t shaking much at all, apart from the ash from the end of their ciggies.

Within a couple of years, all that had changed of course. And for Salmon, there’s one main reason – their experience in Hamburg, the Hanseatic port city where John, Paul, George (Pete and Stu) grew up and really learned how to ‘mach schau’.

Unlike The Liverbirds’, this is an ‘origins’ tale that has already been told many times and in both print and on screen, including the 1994 Ian Softley biopic Backbeat.

So chapeau to Salmon for infusing the Beatles’ backstory with an unexpected freshness, principally by making the late, legendary Liverpudlian Allan Williams (Andrew Schofield) the conduit through which the action unfolds.

Fab Four fans know Williams as the ‘man who gave the Beatles away’, but the general population are probably still mostly unaware of him or his guiding role before Brian Epstein glided on to the scene.

That’s rectified here. In fact, Shake It Up Baby! is arguably as much Williams’ own story as it is that of the band he set on the road to stardom.

The pre-Hamburg Beatles are keen but callow, Self-belief outstrips collective musical ability, despite the promising component parts.

Hamburg turns this raw material – and I use the word raw deliberately and in a good way – into a lean, mean, world-changing machine. One with style and substance.

It takes a while for them to get there however, because the road to St Pauli has many diversions along the way, from painting the loos of Williams’ club the Jacaranda to trudging around Scotland supporting Liverpool-born crooner Johnny Gentle while Williams forges his own path as a glad-handing musical impresario.

Above: Andrew Schofield (Allan Williams) and Lord Woodbine (Andro Cowperthwaite) in the Jacaranda. Top: The teenage Beatles and Allan Williams. Photos by David Munn.

Salmon presents the chronological tale in a series of short, sharp, ever-changing scenes which drive the storytelling, but occasionally it would be nice for some to unfold and breathe a bit more. There’s a lot of story to fit in to one evening, and it would also help break up what risks feeling like a constant cavalcade of characters.

Just occasionally the exposition, principally in the first half, can also feel a bit grating, with the (non-Williams) figures - played by a versatile and busy supporting ensemble - providing verbal backstory explanations of people and places.

The Beatles finally get to Germany towards the end of that first half – Hamburg, 'Blackpool with strip clubs' – where the quintet live ‘on cornflakes and sex’ and play hours and hours of fast, furious, loud and dirty rock ‘n’ roll in clubs like the Indra and Kaiserkeller.  

The production’s cohort of young actor-musos create a fantastic, blistering live sound together and once heard, it’s one you want hear a lot more of. It gives the audience of 2025 a small idea of the visceral impact this band of lads from Liverpool must have had on the audiences of 1960-61 (a time when the bobby socks and bunches of the skirt-twirling 50s were still to be fully phased out).

Above: Grace Galloway (Astrid and others) and dancers. Photo by David Munn.

They are uniformly strong as performers, cohesive as a band and utterly believable as a group of friends on an adventure together, complete with plenty of bickering.

Michael Hawkins is a veteran John Lennon, having played the role twice before including on tour in Cilla the Musical. Apart from the uncanny physical and vocal presence, he absolutely nails Lennon’s acerbic wit and underlying sense of vulnerability.

This is laid bare in the second half when Lennon and the other Beatles try and take in the devastating news of Stuart Sutcliffe’s (Kieran Andrew who doubles as smoothie Brian Epstein) death.

And James Jackson, making his professional acting debut, is a delight as George Harrison, the wide-eyed baby of the band, for whom Hamburg is a transformative experience in more ways than one.

George (James Jackson), Paul (Guy Freeman), Ringo (Nick Sheedy - also Pete) and John (Michael Hawkins). Photo by David Munn.

Meanwhile Andrew Schofield is the perfect choice as narrator. Dry, funny and collaborative (skills honed over many years, not least in the bear pit of the Royal Court auditorium), he's director Stephen Fletcher's on-stage proxy, steering the good ship Shake It Up with a firm hand on the tiller.

It also helps that he’s speaking to a Liverpool audience which gets the references to Williams that others might not. I suspect a good proportion of those in attendance on press night knew the man (myth, legend) personally, hence some knowing laughter.

Fletcher himself retains a good narrative pace, punctuated by bursts of live music, pushing the story ever closer to the Abbey Road studio recording session that launched them on the path to immortality.

It appears to be a deliberate decision to keep the band performing upstage until the Beatles are ready to burst on to the scene and lead a revolution, but it does mean the central characters can become lost behind the bright, tight, hepcat choreography which often fills the stage in front of them.

When they do emerge centre stage, it's for an on-your-feet encore finale where the covers give way to an exuberant Fab Four medley.

Does Shake It Up Baby! ultimately make it to the toppermost of the poppermost? Yes it certainly does.