Full casting has been announced for Iain Softley’s stage adaptation of his award-winning film about the early years of the Beatles, Backbeat, according to a report on the website for the U.K. Magazine The Stage. The piece will premiere at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, February 9-March 6, with an opening on February 12. Softley will direct the play which has been co-written by Stephen Jeffreys.
Set during ‘the Hamburg Years’ in the early 1960s before the band became successful and world famous, Backbeat 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, the beatnik German photographer who Sutcliffe fell in love with. Struggling with his various loyalties, Sutcliffe eventually chose Astrid and art over the Beatles and music.
The company will feature Alex Robertson (Sutcliffe), Isabella Calthorpe (Kirchherr), Andrew Knott (John Lennon), Daniel Healy (Paul McCartney), Jamie Blackley (George Harrison) and Oliver Bennett (Pete Best), along with Kate Hodgson, Patrick Lannigan, and Charles Swift.
For further information, visit www.citz.co.uk.
