The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 11

LIVE ARTS 1 1 1 The Guardian Saturday May 9 1998 The truth about the Beatles' banjo Royal Court's pneumatic thrill What's so bad about Arab Strap? Bacall's big night All you need is lessons seem to be of much help to McCartney, either. A picture of Lennon performing at the Woolton fete in July 1957 also shows him playing a six-string guitar. Maybe Lennon taught himself. Sick, rancid, Just some of the adjectives that have been applied to Sarah Kane's latest shocker, Cleansed, at the Royal Court. The same cannot be said of Victoria Harwood, who plays a peepshow stripper in this gorefest in which throats are slit, tongues cut out and genitals crudely transplanted.

While other members of the cast have been barracked and booed, the mob is stilled the second Harwood steps on stage. This may have something to do with the professionalism she brings to the part. Way back in the dim and distant past, long before she made her mark as an actress on TV and in the theatre, she did work as a stripper. But that's no big deal these days, when even the most esteemed critics troop dutifully to Raymond's Revue Bar to review his latest floor show. It is well, almost comic book buoyancy that has awed the rabble and prompted such animated speculation about advances in surgical science.

The Royal Court is at pains to point out that it was unaware of this. "She turned up to the auditions in a baggy jumper, so we had no idea what was underneath." Quite. Funny business, PR. Especially in pop. Given the aggression with which most publicists pursue their trade, one company was uncharacteristically reserved last week.

One of its bands, Falkirk gloomsters Arab Strap, were playing two dates in their native Scotland, and as the Strap (whose name apparently derives from an archaic device for maintaining a male erection) had received raves for their new album, we thought readers might like a review of the show at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. So we asked for tickets. Sorry, they said. None available, not even if you pay. "We didn't think anyone would want to review the gig," said the press officer.

Odd a call to King Tut's revealed that not just the Guardian but every Scottish paper had asked for passes. Never mind. Could we have tickets for Aberdeen instead? No. Why? The rivalry that broke up the Beatles 30 years ago reared its head again this week in the High Court, when George Harrison took the opportunity of a tussle over a bootleg recording to claim that it was he who taught John Lennon to play the guitar. Despite insisting that he disdained "Beatles the prickly Harrison recalled that when he joined up, Lennon only had a little banjo-like guitar with three strings.

Young George rather than Paul McCartney, who has claimed something similar in the past sorted him out, putting on all six strings and "showing him all the Sadly for Harrison, the evidence is against him. Let us turn to Mark Lewisohn, Beatlology professor emeritus, and his encyclopedic history. The Complete Beatles Chronicle. A tell-tale picture of Lennon and McCartney fronting the then Quarrymen at a Liverpool Conservative Club on November 23, 1957, shows Lennon playing a six-string guitar. Fourteen-year-old Harrison did not join the group until three months later, so he was hardly in a position to have already given John guitar or stringing lessons.

Harrison did confess in court that it has taken years of meditation to get Beatles "junk" out of his mind. It certainly seems to have been effective. Incidentally, the photographic evidence doesn't Yet another Reza Lauren Bacall "Because all their mates are going to be there, and it won't be a good gig." How about Portsmouth next week? Surely that's far enough south to prevent their friends turning up. Long pause. "We want people to write about them in six months' time." There's a first a PR who discourages the press from writing about his charges.

What is it with Yasmina Reza? While the sixth cast settles into Art at Wynd-hams, her latest play. The Unexpected Man, ends its brief life at the RSC's least glam house, the Pit, with the news that this slight, fragrant two-hander is also transferring to the West End, lock, stock and Gani-bon. And who should be in the audience the other night but Lauren Bacall. Rumour has it she'd love a crack at it in New York. Stories by Fiachra Gibbons, Seumas Milne and Caroline Sullivan PHOTOGRAPH: TOM JENKINS More Beach Boy than Daddy's boy One for the Victoria Harwood Phone mm iiiiiiiiM mm Sean Lennon thinks the US government killed his father.

His first British gig is in the airless back room of a north London pub. So why does he sound so happy, asks Adam Sweeting ShowVl mm ii iMiMiMirfcmij interests is insane, I think, or very naive, or hasn't thought about it clearly." John "was dangerous to the government. If he had said 'Bomb the White House tomorrow', there would have been 10,000 people who would have done it." A media storm erupted and Sean hastily backpedalled. But the affair gave a glimpse of what's really going on behind Sean's bland, smiling face. Maybe all this blissed-out pop will eventually give way to outbursts of raging emotional trauma.

His album was produced by ORANGE ON mysterious Oriental potion. However, despite Sean's claim that "we're gonna do some mellow sorta groovy fun it's not easy to achieve smoothness and fine detail stuffed into the back room of a dingy north London pub. Mystery Juice sounded like the Velvet Underground at an early stage of rehearsal, with its pingy guitar and Honda's cheesy keyboard effects. Into The Sun is an attempt to clone the palms-and-pina-colada sound of Astrud Gilberto, but live it resembled a novelty song. Sean warned us Sean's Theme would be but all that meant was that it has some odd chords in disconnected sequences, plonky keyboards and droning vocals.

Sean is also living proof of the great divide between British and American pop. Excitedly, he told the crowd, "I interviewed Brian Wilson for Raygun magazine! I actually got to hang out with him and he played me Little Surfer Girl!" This was greeted by a stony silence that suggested few onlookers knew or cared who Wilson was. "Well, to me it was a a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Sean mumbled. Then he played his version of God Only Knows, although frankly he needn't have bothered. Maybe Sean has to get the "son-of" thing out of his system before he can be himself, and he's doing it by pretending to be the king of post-lounge Muzak.

But is he a star in the making, or a pampered wimp? THIS was only Sean Lennon's seventh performance a solo artist, and his First in Britain, so you'd think they might have found him a more salubrious venue than the airless pit of the Camden Falcon. Sean began protesting about the stifling heat the moment he walked onstage, but punters had already been struggling for breath for half an hour. The object of Sean's appearance was to introduce his new album, Into The Sun, a collection of wistful atmospheres and floaty, Latin-flavoured pop that could have been the winning entry in a Sound As Unlike John Lennon As Possible competition. Where Lennon pere could be raucous and aggressive, Sean sounds as though he'd be happier drawing pictures of tropical fish. Where his dad felt compelled to explore the dark crevices of his own psyche, Sean would probably rather be flying a kite.

"I really wanted to have that positive sunshine vibe on my record," he claims. "I thought a lot about the beach and the ocean while writing." Being the son of John and Yoko would be difficult enough, even if Sean wasn't inviting comparisons by pursuing a musical career. He found this out the hard way recently, when he made some controversial remarks about his father's death to New Yorker magazine. Sean commented that anyone who believes Mark Chapman was "just some crazy guy who killed my dad for his personal i mm nri a imhh PACKAGE INCLUDES 12 MONTHS LINE RENTAL CONNECTION FEE 15 MINUTES OF CALLS EVERY MONTH DIGITAL MOBILE PHONE Model: MOTOROLA MR30 149 I mm KEEP IN CONTROL WITH NO CONTRACT NO MONTHLY BILLS NO CREDIT CHECKS INCLUDES 30 MINUTES 'JUST TALK' CALL VOUCHER Model: MOTOROLA MR201 Was 149.99 IN io paying mommy t.6J uao ror connexion 17.63 has to becreOited to account every sl months. mobile phones Is suNect to status.

A deposit may be I illPBfl ami STORE NOW! I EXCLUSIVE li THEBreGEST GUARANTEED LOWEST PRICES NEW ORANGE UPGRADE SERVICE NOW VOU CAN UPGRADE TO A NEW ORANGE PHONE AND KEEP YOUR EXISTING NUMBER" ior pnom io.ou mm mm innm 'Double Inclusive calls tor 12 2 months on Talk 15 tariff required. Ask ln-store lor details. Wet and windy e129.99 The album is like California sunshine bottled and labelled like some mysterious potion his girlfriend, Yuka Honda, and apparently the songs were mostly inspired by the pair's first six months of living together. Honda is one half of the New York pop duo Cibo Matto, and both she and her Cibo Matto partner, Miho Hatori, are in Sean's touring band. The line-up is completed by bassist Timo Harris and percussionist Kore Duma.

The album steals up on you with its mixture of artlessness and cunning. The songs are simple and tuneful, but have been delicately tinted with harmonies, keyboards and unexpected electronic effects. It's like California sunshine bottled and labelled like some Susan Brown to write a strange, discursive Freudian drama about older women and younger men. The focus is very much on Jamie's mother, Kay, brought up in France, and on her old Gallic nanny, Agnes, both of whom are inexplicably drawn to the errant Luke, a self-styled "self-centred Such things, you may argue, happen in life. But on stage, the growing love between the schoolmistressy, 69-year-old Agnes and the 21-year-old spoilt brat Luke seems frankly incredible.

Holman also seems like an eccentric photographer who, present during a volcanic eruption, turns out marginal stUl-life portraits. We want to learn the cause of social discontent in the North-East. Instead we get a story about a nftiidaHHSiiiniiitv'iiiiHHre BUILT-IN ORGANISER, CLOCK AND ALARM FUNCTIONS NOKIA DIGITAL MOBILE PHONE WITH BUILT-IN ORGANISER 3 built-in fun games Personalise your ringing tones for different callers Up to 180 minutes talktime ULTRA SMALL. AND COMPACT MOTOROLA DIGITAL MOBILE PHONE Incredibly small and lightweight Up to 110 minutes talktime 45 hours standby Fax and data compatible Model: StarTAC 501 Was E129.99 More arts, Saturday, page 4 night wayward family in which the mother struggles to overcome the loss of a childhood inheritance of a French vineyard hardly, I suspect, a typical Teesside problem. I am not asking for sociology, just drama.

Holman's play, switching from Middles-borough tower-block flats to a French chateau, has the meandering quality of an adapted novel. It has some good individual scenes particularly those involving Kay and a scruffy ex-con whom she disconsolately takes to her bed but in the end it is too oblique for its own good. The director, Steven Pimlott, should have been far tougher with the text. But there are two first-rate peformances: one from Susan Brown as the guilt-ridden Kay, who has displaced her maternal love onto Luke, and another from Susan Engel, who, as the French nanny speaks English with the meticulous precision of a foreigner. Barry Stanton also offers staunch support as Kay's grey-ponytailed lover, and I would hardly blame Paul Popplewell for failing to explain why everyone is so magnetised by the manipulative Luke, as if he were Middlesborough's answer to Leonardo DiCaprio.

At The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (01 789 295620), till September. Michael Billington Bad Weather The Other Place, Stratford ROBERT Holman is a poetic, allusive dramatist who rarely raises his voice. Indeed, one of his best works was called Making Noise Quietly. But after three hours of delicately exposed nerve-ends in Bad Weather, getting its premiere in Stratford-upon-Avon, I found myself pining for more social detail and political anger. The play starts with a palpable injustice.

After a fight outside a Chinese restaurant in Middlesborough in which a guy's head is kicked in, 19-year-old Jamie is arrested, tried and sent down for four years. The only problem is that the real culprit is his best friend, Luke a lad who has grown up with him on the same estate, who has been nurtured by Jamie's mother and whose sister is carrying Jamie's child. Such is the bald scenario, which could go several ways. One might have a moral drama about Jamie's crisis of conscience: to grass or not to grass? Or a scalding attack on social deprivation and judicial incompetence on Tees-side. In fact, Holman- chooses 72 hours standby Model: 702 store lor details.

'To remain connected a minimum ol BMP 49W9.W I WHH YOU COWffCT TO TMK 15 OH TB1K 68 THBfff on ifc. fast morthhi hill "When vou connect to the MH30 All-InctuiWe Menage, saving compered Talk' Package. "Subject to an additional Chan. Ask ln wk. i Offer excludes HR30 All-Inclusive Packaoc and -Just andor 6 months on Talk 60 tariff.

Ask ln-store for details. When vou buy any Motorola Digital Mobile Phone. Ask More lor details. Connection.