The Stage

Lennon musical will tour with revisions after Ono legal threat

Published Tuesday 8 November 2005 at 12:00 by Alistair Smith

Come Together Right Now, a new musical show about John Lennon, has been resurrected for a UK regional tour after previous attempts to stage the production were halted by the threat of legal action from Yoko Ono and Sony Music Corporation.

The show had been ready to tour in March last year under the name Lennon - A Day in the Life, but Sony and Ono, who owns Lennon’s image rights, warned they would sue if it went ahead.

Producer Ian Watts, who plays Paul McCartney in the production, said: “We’d been rehearsing, we’d got the show ready. We’d set up two shows in seaside resorts and then legal action was threatened. It left us out of pocket, after a year’s work.

“I got in touch with the Performing Right Society, which was very helpful and realistic. They said we could apply to Yoko Ono for permission but we almost certainly wouldn’t get it. So we have had to alter the show. We have had to come back to it being more of a concert.”

Because of the dispute, Watts has been forced to remove any script and storyline from the piece, take John Lennon’s name out of the title and remove any photos or memorabilia from the show and the publicity.

The production has now embarked on an eight-venue tour, calling at Folkestone, Newark, Stevenage, Truro, Torquay, Hastings and Peterborough and culminating with a performance at the Liverpool Empire in December to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s death.

Watts also hopes to bring the show to the West End with the help of London-based producer Michael Vine of Objective Productions, who presented Derren Brown’s Something Wicked This Way Comes at the Cambridge earlier this year. Vine said he believed the production would suit the Cambridge and could be there as early as spring 2006. He added: “It’s an exciting performance and the guy playing the lead [Johnny Silver as Lennon] is incredible. The whole market is tainted by lookalikes and it is a shame that the people who repeat other people’s music are stigmatised for not being original. This show has tremendous musical credibility.”