Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles? at Minerva Theatre, Chichester: 'Unlike anything I’ve seen before' | Review

At one end, the crowd-pleasing, box office hits which are designed to entertain, and the more cerebral plays to be dissected and discussed at the other.

This production finds itself firmly at the latter end of the scale: a conversation between playwright Adrienne Kennedy and her son Adam P Kennedy in which she recalls how she met the Fab Four in the late 1960s through her quest to write a play based on John Lennon’s poetry.

The dialogue from this conversation is taken verbatim and brought to life by Jack Benjamin (whose lines you could count on one hand) and Bafta-winner Rakie Ayola, who talks almost non-stop for 75 minutes and is the undoubted star of the show.

And deservedly so: the modus operandi of this production is to shine a light on, and give voice to, a playwright who after 50 years is only now getting her flowers; Adrienne’s first Broadway production took place last year when she was in her 90s.

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Despite uprooting her life and Adam’s to come to London, armed only with a list of second-hand theatrical connections, Adrienne’s unflinching ability to take opportunities as they present themselves leads her to rub shoulders with London’s creative elite, including Sir Laurence Olivier, and to infiltrate The Beatles’ inner circle.

But the process of producing her play finds Adrienne increasingly pushed to the fringes as these industry titans assert their claim on her work, despite her being the person that brought them all together. We do not know who orchestrated this, or why – this is Adrienne’s experience of what happened – but what Ayola so brilliantly conveyed is her sense of wonder and excitement to even have a seat at the table, to find the silver lining.

However, while undeniably authentic and amplifying Ayola’s performance, I found the verbatim nature of the dialogue to be a double-edged sword. It also made the play more impenetrable.

So many names and people were introduced I felt I needed a list to keep up at times, which seemed at odds with the goal to share Adrienne with the masses. This was remedied in part by a 20 minute film which served as the play’s second act and gave some valuable context from Adam about how the show came into being, a history of Adrienne’s career, interviews with Ayola and director Diyan Zora and excerpts from the playwright herself, in her own words.

In a somewhat unique twist, we were able to directly compare Ayola and Adrienne’s voices – underlining how accomplished the actress’ performance was. As she spoke, the US theatre veteran acknowledged it was academics who had ‘kept her career afloat’.

While I’m not convinced this production will change this fact on a wider scale, it was undoubtedly unlike anything I’ve seen before – and judging by the standing ovation it got, Adrienne’s legacy will now be remembered by at least one room of people in Chichester.Until July 8.