Backbeat Announces Full Casting

Casting has been announced for Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys’ Backbeat, which will play the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre, beginning performances September 24 in anticipation of an official opening on October 10.

As previously reported, David Leveaux will direct the production, which will have musical direction by Paul Stacey

The show is a stage adaptation Softley’s award-winning 1994 film about the early years of the Beatles and centers on the triangular relationship between Stuart Sutcliffe, the band’s original bassist and an accomplished painter, his best friend John Lennon, and Astrid Kirchherr, a beatnik German photographer who Sutcliffe fell in love with.

Among the songs features in the production are such Beatles hits as “Twist & Shout,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Please Mr Postman,” and “Money.”‘

The company will feature Nick Blood (Sutcliffe), Andrew Knott (Lennon), Ruta Gedmintas (Kirchherr), Daniel Healy (Paul McCartney), William Payne (George Harrison), Oliver Bennet (Pete Best), Adam Sopp as (Tony Sheridan/Ringo Starr), Dominic Rouse (Klaus Voorman), Ben Fox (Arthur Ballard/Bert Kaempfert), and James Wallace (Sir George Martin).

The creative team will include Christopher Oram and Andrew D Edwards (production design); Howard Harrison and David Holmes (lighting design); Paul Groothuis and Ed Clarke (sound design); and Timothy Bird and Nina Dunn for Knifedge (projection design).

For more information and tickets, click here.