RAIN performs at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Tuesday, May 14. (Photo by Joah Buley, Special to the Star-Advertiser)
REVIEW BY JOHN BERGER / jberger@staradvertiser.com
To get that 800-pound gorilla out of the way quick, fast and in a hurry: How long does to it take while watching a tribute to the Beatles to accept a Paul McCartney who plays that iconic Höfner 500/1 bass right-handed?
Experience the Beatles with RAIN» Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall, 777 Ward Ave. |
The answer? Not long at all.
An enthusiastic crowd of Beatles fans welcomed Joey Curatolo portraying McCartney as “Experience the Beatles with RAIN” opened at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Tuesday, May 14.
Curatolo certainly looks and sounds like the “cute Beatle,” drummer Ralph Castelli is a good fit visually as Ringo Starr, and the two-hour production lives up to its billing as an opportunity to “experience” the Beatles. As with “Legends in Concert,” where tribute artists portray deceased entertainers like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, RAIN becomes ever more convincing as the show progresses.
Curatolo and Castelli are spot-on look-alikes from the opening “Ed Sullivan Show” segment through the encore numbers. Joe Bithorn (George Harrison) looks amazingly like Harrison while portraying “the quiet Beatle” in an “Abbey Road” segment. Steve Landes (John Lennon) likewise captures the look of Lennon in the group’s later years.
Curatolo and Landes capture the key elements of McCartney and Lennon’s stage characters in convincing style.
Looks aside, the quartet’s musicianship is never an actors’ illusion. The faux Fab Four do justice to the Beatles’ music throughout — often playing it at stadium concert decibel levels.
The RAIN experience covers all the basic chapters in Beatles history, from their arrival in America in 1964 to their split six years later. The first half of the show recreates the Beatles’ performances on the “Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964, songs from “A Hard Day’s Night” and their Shea Stadium concert in 1965.
It continues with a look at what might have been if the Beatles had done songs from “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as concert material, and ends with a magnificent rendition of “A Day In The Life” that builds impressively to that final power chord.
The second half of the show consists of an apparently random selection of songs from “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver,” “The Beatles,” “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be,” and some songs that weren’t released as album tracks until after the band broke up. It too is an engaging recreation of the Beatles and their music.
Although “Hey Jude” wasn’t the Beatles’ final release, it is an excellent choice as the final sing-along song to cap the encore before the band takes its final bow. Don’t be surprised if you’re singing along with RAIN long before that, however!
“Experience the Beatles with RAIN” is embellished with a fascinating assortment of historic video clips that capture the mood of the 1950′s and ‘60s. There is an even larger amount of original faux-Beatles graphics that are as clever in concept as Eric Idle’s classic Rutles parodies of the ‘70s.
Video clips include the familiar crowd footage from the Sullivan show and the Shea concert. The vintage crowd shots are interspersed with live concert hall crowd shots. A lot of people were seen enjoying themselves on the big screens on opening night.
RAIN includes a “fifth Beatle,” keyboardist Mark Beyer, who provides all the additional instruments needed to recreate the Beatles’ recordings on stage. Beyer performs off-stage for the early segments — adding Lennon’s harmonica part on “Please Please Me,” for example. He joins the others on stage after intermission and is introduced to the audience — “Who is that man back there?” — just before they do “In My Life” (That’s a good fit too; Beatles fans know that it was producer George Martin, not one of the Beatles, who played the keyboard part when the Beatles were recording it).
Beyer’s role in the “experience” is acknowledged again when he joins the others as they take their final Beatles-style bow in what is thoroughly entertaining tribute to the Beatles.
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John Berger has been a mainstay in the local entertainment scene for more than 40 years. Contact him via email at jberger@staradvertiser.com