A gigantic reconstruction of Abbey Road's main studio filled most of the floor plan of the Brighton Centre's main auditorium, flanked by rows of seating and draped on three sides by semi-transparent screens. I had arrived on this blustery Wednesday evening to watch the spectacle of this special performance, recreating a key component of The Beatles marvellous show-business story, their career-spanning recording sessions at the now legendary Abbey Road studios, but nobody seemed quite sure exactly what we were going to see:- would this be some grand narrative musical theatre dramatisation or a meticulous re-staging of the recording sessions focussed on the musical performances?

In the end it turned out to be a bit of both. An actor portraying the late, great George Martin guided us through no less than 60 Beatles songs, performed by a huge ensemble cast of actor-musicians, with most of the dialogue seemingly lifted straight from outtakes from the sessions' cutting room floor, like the famous “I got blisters on my fingers line”, yelled at the end of a ferocious performance of 'Helter Skelter'. The story plays out pretty much in chronological order, apart from the opening rendition of 'All You Need Is Love', which recreates the performance which Britain offered as its contribution to the world's first global television link; it was 1967 and a crowded Abbey Road studio was being broadcast to 400 million people worldwide via satellite – a fantastic moment to show how staggeringly far The Beatles came in their first five years, the period recreated in the first act. It's also a great opportunity to utilise the full ensemble for a big opening number; this show has three Ringo's, two John's, two Paul's and two George's alongside an orchestra and supporting players – around 45 players in total. The attention to detail is staggering, overseen by Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick, the studio has been rebuilt precisely down to the sound baffles, microphones and iconic instruments – like the Mellotron, famous for that 'Strawberry Fields' flute sound we all know and love.

The performers are overwhelmingly excellent, the lead John and Paul have got their respective voices captured perfectly. I find myself thinking several times throughout the show how it is the grit in their vocals that really hammers home The Beatles sound, no matter how squeaky pop clean the band got, they still had the rock'n'roll edge of the rhythm and blues music that initially inspired them to pick up strings. The lead George Harrison is a revelation too, I can hardly take my eyes off the wiry figure as he struts around the stage in platform shoes, perfectly capturing the distinctive tone of his lead guitar solos. It's only Ringo that falls a little short for me, perhaps I'm being fussy but his lead vocal turns sound a little flat to me on 'With A Little Help From My Friends' and 'Good Night'. It kind of works on the latter, his impression seems more intent on recreating the Thomas The Tank Engine narrator's accent than Starr's passable baritone. The real Ringo had the amazing ability to play his fills slightly behind the beat, creating great tension, unfortunately trying to recreate this led to a couple of iffy moments – 'Day In The Life' and 'Something' both just felt like the drummer fell out of time for his fills and rushed back to the beat after them.

The first act relied a little too heavily on multi-media projections for my taste, as the performances were so excellent and authentic I could have done without the stage being obscured for most of the show. I expect this was done to emphasise the feeling of being a fly-on-the-wall, peering in to these intimate sessions and to provide us with some additional background information – each track began with a title, take number and other such titbits of information projected on the screen. These projections seemed to work best when they switched from the studio Beatles to the second set of Beatles who performed on a sound-stage at the back, recreating television appearances or live shows while the white lab-coat wearing studio technicians set up the main studio for the next song.

The second act relied much less on the multi-media stuff, and also less on our George Martin narrator – opening with recording sessions for Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the material is left to speak for itself, and what fantastic material it is. 'She's Leaving Home' ended up being a surprising highlight, as the orchestra played it beautifully and the vocals were sublime. Magical Mystery Tour followed blending in some variety-style performers running around the edge of the stage like some forgotten Carry On film – which, although it felt a little incongruous to me, was very much in-keeping with the original project and a reminder that for all of their innovations The Beatles were still very much a product of their times and still held a soft-spot for quintessentially British pursuits, like the mundane coach tours they were sending up in spectacularly psychedelic fashion. These two albums were held up as a pinnacle in the lads career, it's interesting how they represented The Beatles (The White Album) fractured recording sessions by showing each member of the band performing a song solo. George had 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' (played gently on acoustic guitar, good for the narrative here but it would have been nice to hear the full version with an Eric Clapton guest appearance), John had a heart-wrenching 'Julia' and then Paul stole the show with a phenomenal performance of 'Blackbird' – the guitar playing and vocal so perfect you almost thought it might be the man himself.

The show rounds itself off with The Beatles' return to the studio, after trying some different approaches with the particularly difficult recording sessions for Let It Be, to record Abbey Road which George Martin agreed to do, so long as they went back to the way they used to do things in the old days. They play the last suite from the medley at the end of the album and, especially as I had it stuck in my head all day in anticipation, feels like the perfect end to an incredible evening of geeking out on the material of one of the greatest bands of all time. I would have been happy without the encore of 'Hey Jude' but it was certainly a crowd pleaser. If you're a Beatles fan I would highly recommend checking out this show if you get the chance. Sure, I've had a few nerdy quibbles, but I can't imagine a better way of hearing these amazing songs performed live, in context with all the bells and whistles.
Adam Kidd

Website: thesessionslive.com