With a finely woven blend of song and interview fragments Australian John Waters takes us inside Lennon’s glass onion, showcasing the brilliance of his songs and his genius for provocative conversation.

There are insightful snippets on all the familiar Lennon touchstones: the tough childhood in Liverpool, the meteoric rise to fame, psychedelic drugs, the Maharishi, Yoko Ono, the rancorous Beatles bust-up and the tragic assassination.

What sets the show apart is the way it reveals the tormented emotional life of a musical legend. [More] 

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Lennon: Through A Glass Onion is a unique experience at The Civic which epitomises a live concert combined with the most entertaining chronological tapestry of commentary.  For children of the 60s likes us it gives you a nostalgic trip down memory lane or, for the punter born after the Lennon/Beatle years, a great historic snapshot of the iconic band and man.

Tribute bands are notoriously either spot on or crap/a waste of time. But luckily for us this show is NOT a tribute concert.  It’s clearly an impression of the man which has been very cleverly shaped and put together using years of research and insight, to form a cohesive whole. The intelligently weaved dialogue which punctuates the songs gives us a tantalising glimpse of a man, his life and his music.  It is a gift to those of us who grew up with those lyrics, the inventiveness and simple feistiness that defines John Lennon.

This show totally succeeds in honouring Lennon’s life, struggles, successes and analysis of those triumphs. [More]
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Audience convened, the houselights go down leaving one spotlight illuminating the microphone slightly off-centre stage for what feels like a minute’s silence, prior to the obligatory no-mobiles/cameras announcement.  Then smartly-suited, smooth-craniumed virtuoso accompanist Bill Risby crosses the stage to his place at the grand piano.  As he begins to play, vocalist John Waters enters in a black leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans with a studded belt, looking more Lemmy than Lennon with his poetically appropriate walrus moustache. 

After an introductory verse of Liverpudlian lullaby Mucky Kid, punctuated by a foreshadowing series of gunshots, Waters launches practically mid-quote into his autobiographical discourse, evidently compiled from selected writings and interviews by the famously political Beatle.  He has the Scouse inflection down although the nasal register seems a bit more Manchester to my ear. 

Of course, none of these comparisons really matter.  Neither does the fact that his singing voice, while sufficiently intense with impressive range, is more gravelly and rustic than the comparatively dulcet qualities of Lennon.  Nor that the numerous songs they play, spanning his repertoire from the Beatles, Plastic Ono and solo works, are to varying degrees quite different arrangements than the originals.

What does matter is the poignancy, insight and humour of his thoughts and lyrics; the simple truths this extraordinary yet proudly human person cultivated and strove toward.  As Waters and Risby play and sing their own musical interpretations, it evokes a more suitably humanistic attitude than a more derivative impression might have. 

The narrative is a more or less chronological sequence of events through his life growing up, becoming a Beatle, meeting Yoko and (spoiler) getting shot dead.  The music isn’t entirely in historic sequence; rather it’s used to emphasise the significance of the current anecdote.  A couple of times certain hits, such as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, are jarringly cut short mid-hook to punctuate some salient point he wants to make, which is momentarily disappointing but soon forgotten as we flow on into the next reflective and/or observational yarn.

In essence, Waters and Risby’s affectionate homage to one of the 20^th century’s most revered musicians and socio-political gurus is a triumphantly minimalist oratorio of sorts. Just the two of them under sharply focused lights penetrating the prevalent darkness. Continual, gradual dry ice makes for an appropriately dreamlike atmosphere as we observe the man’s words and music through the metaphorical mists of time.   

Like any celebrity, John Lennon’s been through the gauntlet of adulation and judgment.  Many of the snippets selected for Waters’ oration make it clear that he was a flawed man, and he knew it.  But the ideologies that rang true for him transcended any shortcomings in his or anybody’s character; he simply wanted to share what he believed was the way forward for a better world – most succinctly, and famously: “All you need is love”.  Any hypocrisy on the protagonist’s part, self-confessed or otherwise, does not alter the truth of the notion. 

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