A big Ono to Lennon show

Perhaps the producers of Broadway's £3.9 million (NZ$10m) tribute to John Lennon should have taken the hint when New York's famously robust critics dismissed it as "Ono-centric" and a "seriously flawed bio-musical".

Even the postponement of the musical's opening performance for two nights to allow for "fundamental changes" failed to dent optimism they were on to a theatrical winner after enlisting the creative support of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.

It took five weeks of excruciating performances in New York's Broadhurst Theatre that was last week playing at less than 40 per cent capacity to persuade the makers of Lennon to bow to the inevitable and pull the plug.

The producers said it will have its last performance on Saturday after 42 previews and 49 regular performances. It is expected to lose its entire 3.9m budget.

Written over seven years using the Beatle's own words the show was supposed to have benefited from the involvement of Ono, but after a troubled debut in San Francisco and then a risky transfer to New York after a radical rewrite, critics made it clear they felt she had been too influential. Newsday wrote that "This is John Lennon as filtered through the protective, selective, later-life self-interest of Yoko Ono Lennon", and The New York Post said the show was "so shaky it can scarcely stagger from one side of the stage to the other".

- INDEPENDENT