And tonight's message is: songs by the Beatles don't stand up to the S Club 7 treatment. Nor are they happy smothered in Backstreet Boys, faux doo-wop mulch. Let It Be sounds repellent as Whitney-style gospel, while a smoochy rap rendition of A Hard Day's Night practically disembowels the song. You don't have to be a rabid Beatles purist to watch 97% of All You Need Is Love! wincing in pain.
Co-devised and co-directed by Jon Miller and Pete Brooks, coming from commercial and avant-garde theatre respectively, the show radiates grand but misguided aims. Like Boyband a couple of years ago, it apes the modern pop concert. It is built around 50-plus Beatles songs and fragments, but, unlike Mamma Mia!, rejects direct narrative; instead, couples form relationships through sets of songs. It attempts to forge a flashy new kind of music theatre while recontextualising the Beatles (no moptops, for instance), but does an abysmal job on both counts. The show is exhausting, infuriating and prodigiously dull.
Essentially, the collaboration between commercial and avant-garde theatre has resulted in the mindless entertainment ethic of the former quelling the creativity of the latter. It's bad enough that the musical arranger, Keith Strachan, has put track after track through the Take That blender, giving In My Life, She's a Woman and Hello, Goodbye the squishy texture of raw mincemeat, but to match these songs with gormless choreography of the Britney variety - or, worse still, having the ensemble just stand about - is an insult to the intelligence.
Several tricks are recycled over the two hours: Adrian Hansel executes impressive somersaults, a girl in a red party frock has a tantrum, songs are woven together (this works incredibly well the first time, when Come Together and Please Please Me merge, but not again). The repetition would be bearable if there was inven tion too but, invariably, the production team has opted for the obvious, so that A Day in the Life begins with everyone in bed and girls squeal at the mention of diamond rings in I Feel Fine.
There are just four songs, including Help!, where you glimpse Brooks's history and co-choreographer Nigel Charnock's work with DV8. A man sits dwarfed on a giant chair for Help!, then joins the ensemble for an exhilaratingly eerie, disjointed sequence that melts into the back wall in bubbles of light. But the moment fades and then it's back to longing for the Bootleg Beatles.
Booking to January 12. Box office: 020-7494 5040.
