Ears on a Beatle

Mark St. Germain’s Ears on a Beatle is firmly set in the 1970s. Richard Nixon is worried about John Lennon’s anti-war activities and influence on young people…J. Edgar Hoover assigns two FBI agents to keep tabs on Lennon….things don’t turn out quite the way Nixon and Hoover intended.

But while the agents in Ears turn out to be as threatening as marshmallows and just as entertaining, the play is so full of references to real-life abuses of power and infringements on liberty that are so pertinent today, especially in the heat of an election, that the playwright’s name could be spelled "Germane." The Human Race Theatre Company production that opens October 16 at The Loft Theatre in Dayton makes the most of the historical similarities.