Backbeat to End West End Run in February; Toronto Engagement Planned

The West End production of Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys’ Backbeat will play its final performance at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre on February 18, according to a report on Whatsonstage.com. David Leveaux has directed the production, which is expected to play Toronto during the summer of 2012.

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 with whom Sutcliffe fell in love.

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

The company features 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 includes Paul Stacey (musical direction), 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.