New Play Credits Overlooked Beatles Influence

Author credits stabilizing effect, creativity of John's first wife
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 16, 2019 11:34 AM CDT
Play Rethinks Cynthia Lennon's Place in Beatles History
John and Cynthia Lennon at Luton Airport in London in 1964, after the Beatles' return from Australia and New Zealand.   (AP Photo/Victor Boynton, File)

If Beatles fans blame Yoko Ono for the Beatles' breakup, maybe they should credit John Lennon's first wife for the Fab Four staying together as long as they did. This Girl, a play about Cynthia Lennon, her husband, and his band, will premiere this summer in Liverpool, hometown of the Beatles, the Guardian reports. The play conveys the creativity of Cynthia Lennon, who was an illustrator, and her stabilizing influence on her husband. "I want to get across how important she was in John's life," said Mike Howl, the playwright. They met as art students in Liverpool in 1957, and were married from 1962 to 1968, through the peak of the Beatles' fame. "I do think that without Cynthia’s love, John would have gone completely off the rails," Howl said.

The playwright, who saw the Beatles and Cynthia in the Cavern Club as a teenager, said it bothered him that her influence has been overlooked. "Their relationship helped to keep the Beatles together for as long as they were," Howl said. The play is a musical with original songs, per La Vida Liverpool. Among the people pleased with the project is the couple's son, Julian. "He said he was pleased someone was finally writing about how talented his mother was," Howl told the Guardian, "since all the world has written about his father and no one has paid her any attention." Cynthia Lennon died in 2015. Ono, John Lennon's second wife, said at the time that she was a wonderful person and mother, per ABC. "I felt proud how we two women stood firm in the Beatles family," Ono said. (More Beatles stories.)

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