Telstar

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Previewed 21 June 2004, opened 24 June 2005, closed 10 September 2005 at the Ambassadors Theatre in London

TELSTAR: The Joe Meek Story - Joe Meek - the World's first independent record producer - lived a brief, explosive and bizarre life which changed the world of music and the lives of everyone in his orbit forever. Despite meagre resources, he recorded three of the biggest hits of the period: Jonny Remember Me, Have I The Right and of course Telstar, which became one of the biggest sellers of all time.

We witness the contained hysteria of these momentous recording sessions and experience the wild times had by his band - a ramshackle bunch of local youngsters, who found themselves suddenly thrown into the big-time. His unrequited love for his one-hit-wonder protégé, his fateful alliance with his landlady, and his crazy business partnership with Screaming Lord Sutch ignite the play in a whirlwind of music, mayhem and madness. Telstar is written by actor Nick Moran of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame and is directed by Paul Jepson. It comes into London's West End after a short regional tour.

"At the New Ambassadors is Joe Meek (Con O'Neill), producer of the biggest selling British hit of all time. Telstar, written by Nick Moran with James Hicks, tells the story of Meek's spectacular rise and desperate amphetamine-fuelled fall into paranoia and debt... Though Meek produced one giant of a record and several smaller but still successful ones, he finds it impossible to leave his cramped and musty flat for a grander, better life. He could have been big but he was too small inside... Moran and Hicks' play is a 1960s period piece with a brilliant script; the language of the era is spot on, Violet [the landlady] complains she is picking up Meek's amp on her wireless and she can't hear The Navy Lark, the boys whom Meek employs to play backing tracks are cocky and quick like the lads on Ready, Steady, Go. O'Neill is a magnificent Meek; a nasty piece of work but you feel for him." The Sunday Telegraph

"Paul Jepson's convincing production of Nick Moran's uneven but efficient play Telstar tells the sad, fascinating story of Meek - tone-deaf, obsessive, volatile, paranoid, yet possibly a genius... Con O'Neill brilliantly inhabits mad Joe Meek, who never lost his West Country burr, nor his camp, high-pitched, spoilt-brat whine, nor his exceptionally short fuse. He rampages around, alternately skipping with excitement and staming with fury or blowing rasperries... Well worth tuning in to." The Mail on Sunday

"Would this biodrama about the pill-popping pop-music producer, Joe Meek, have reached the West End if it hadn't been written by the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels actor, Nick Moran? Hmm, maybe... Many of the smaller roles in Paul Jepson's production are crudely caricatured, especially Joseph Morgan's Heinz Burt, the talentless protege with whom Meeks becomes besotted. Linda Robson is also on automatic pilot as the hacked-off but kindly landlady. That said, the chart-topping songs are slipped in remarkably deftly, without halting the storyline, and the central performance by Con O'Neill gathers a ferocious, desperate momentum." The Independent on Sunday

"Nick Moran has taken Joe Meek's story and turned it into what at first seems to be gags-to-riches comedy. But luck runs out fast in Meek's life and what develops is shambolic tragedy, north London's answer to Ibsen. Meek is a nutcase. He is played by Con O'Neill with greasy, paranoid desperation to match his environs... The flat has only one thing going for it: its landlady. Linda Robson gives the part her all - she's a trouper. But by far the most enjoyable and zestful performance of the evening is Joseph Morgan's Heinz, the glittering, second-rate star who steals Meek's heart." The Observer