The press release for this play suggests that “…this dialogue-driven story will make audiences feel like a fly on a wall inside the Lennon’s quarters in the Dakota” on the day that Lennon was shot. That kind of realism is not necessarily something that should be striven for. The script for (Just Like) Starting Over is nothing more than a series of monologues by John Lennon (played by Dave Natale) that are occasionally interrupted by a flavorless interviewer (Brian Upton) and which continually steamroll over Yoko Ono (Naho Shioya). Even if it were filmed, I would only want to see the interview if it were interwoven with concert footage—so what would be the appropriate stage representation? Perhaps flashbacks, showing Lennon actually doing something, would be too stage-y for modern audiences, but the way that playwright Steven Roseta presents the interview—start to finish, entirely talk-driven—is simply too little.

And director James Veitch does far too much. The set is a suggestion of Lennon’s apartment—nice furniture in front of a backdrop composed of headlines from the ’60s, ’70s, and 1980 that cleverly mask a door and a filing cabinet drawer—and every single inch of the set (backstage included) gets trampled by Lennon in the course of this play. There are only so many ways to direct talking-head plays, and Veitch took the visually arresting route. Natale’s Lennon climbs ladders, raises his voice every other paragraph, lies on a couch, waves his arms, and toys with his glasses: There’s a physical quirk for every single dialogue beat. With his semi-Irish-sounding Cockney accent, the screaming ex-Beatle made me think of Scrooge McDuck; I half-expected him to spit out a gold coin.

Some aspects of the acting were fine; Natale’s Lennon believably loved Shioya’s Ono; their cuddliness and adoration seem in line with the historical record. Here is a man who was awed by his wife, and a bit flabbergasted that the world didn’t love her in the same way that he did. Shioya’s Ono was much more of a faithful re-creation than the Leaping Lennon; her delivery and movements were close to the subject. But then, she delivered a fifth of the lines and a twelfth of the action; surely the fact that the weight of the play rests on Natale inspired most of the overly active caricaturing. Brian Upton’s job as Interviewer (sample dialogue, delivered with awe: “Are you asking us to consider something new?”) currently ranks as one of Seattle’s most thankless, directly after lead mop at the Lusty Lady.

There’s a point near the end where Lennon thrusts his fists into the air and shouts, “Where there’s life, there’s hope!” Frankly, I don’t care if he actually said this in the Dakota on the day that he died; it’s a cliché, and it’s embarrassing to watch, especially in the way it’s blown into something Shakespearean. The dialogue needs an edit for a theatrical ear, and it just doesn’t get it. Nobody is going to care about John Lennon if we keep recycling these hippie-dippie truisms without getting into the meat of the man; his contradictions and his working-class-boy-made-ridiculously-wealthy cynicism. Audiences can simultaneously accept both the John Lennon who sought inner peace with the Maharishi and the John Lennon who threatened to start a fistfight when he left the Maharishi’s custody a disillusioned and angry man. This production doesn’t work, but I’m not sure there is any way to produce this play in a compelling manner. As a character sketch, the interview was the wrong source material to draw from—we get one hopeful afternoon from a man who unwittingly stinks of death. John Lennon, quite simply, deserves a lot better than this voyeuristic rock-star hagiography.

editor@thestranger.com