Let’s be candid: Under normal circumstances, the phrase “a dance performance inspired by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is a good reason to run screaming.
Practically no one does “Beatles-inspired” art that comes anywhere close to getting it right. Even if you’re willing to credit the spectacular design and staging of the tableaux in Julie Taymor’s film Across the Universe, you’ll still have to surmount the swanning, Auto-Tune-heavy song arrangements (blame Moulin Rouge) and the frustratingly literalistic extrapolations of the lyrics into character names, plot points, and mise-en-scènes.
Of course, the same thing was done, and worse—though also better, because that’s what camp means—in the 1978 film debacle Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which Peter Frampton and the Brothers Gibb star as Billy Shears and the Lonely Hearts Club Band. They, along with Billy’s true love Strawberry Fields, battle to save their hometown of Heartland, USA (the honorable Mr. Kite, mayor), from the evil developer Mr. Mustard.
