Boston Review: "Ears on a Beatle" on Tap at Lyric Stage

"Ears on a Beatle"

Written by Mark St. Germain

Directed by Paula Ramsdell

Scenic and Costume Design by Robert M. Russo

Lighting Design by Eleanor Moore

Cast:

Howard Ballantine, Steven Barkhimer

Daniel McLure, Michael Kaye

Performances: Now through November 20

Box Office: 617-437-7172 or www.lyricstage.com

I've often wondered why the information gleaned from spying is called "intelligence." As shown in Mark St. Germain's recent Off-Broadway hit "Ears on a Beatle" now making its Boston premiere at the Lyric Stage Company, the paranoia that prompts government agencies to spend millions of tax dollars on celebrity wire-tapping is anything but intelligent.

"Ears on a Beatle" is a fictionalized and often humorous accounting of the years in which the United States government kept John Lennon under surveillance. While the play doesn't really break any new ground in taking comedic jabs at the serious issues involved in invading an individual's privacy for the public good, it does go beyond the simple buffoonery of M.A.S.H.'s uber-paranoid Colonel Flagg or Mad Magazine's self-destructing "Spy vs. Spy."

What really makes "Ears on a Beatle" scarily different from a sit-com or cartoon, however, is that it is based in fact. According to documents recently declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act, both the FBI and INS spent more money trying to gain evidence against and deport the former Beatle than they did trying to rid our country of Nazi war criminals. Intelligence, indeed.

While Lennon's anti-war activities were considered a threat to the Nixon administration, they were not illegal. In order to justify any attempt to send him back to Liverpool, therefore, the FBI needed to catch him in the act, say, of possessing narcotics. Enter the eyes and ears of Howard Ballantine (Steven Barkhimer) and Daniel McLure (Michael Kaye), playwright St. Germain's undercover operatives assigned to monitor and record Lennon's every move and word. On one level these somewhat stereotypically drawn agents are used to make fun of the ridiculous suspicions that both drive and result from the covert gathering of information. On another level, however, they become the play's tragic figures whose spying and lying irrevocably transform them by giving them knowledge they'd rather not own.

Ballantine is the more experienced agent whose total dedication to the job has cost him his marriage and the love of his daughter. This buttoned up by-the-book automaton appears as a comic caricature initially, quoting company policy chapter and verse. Later, thankfully, a softer, more complex side emerges as his disillusionment with his job changes his priorities. McLure, in contrast, is the novice – a wide-eyed innocent who is eager to learn at his hero's knee. He is torn, however, by his loyalty to a brother serving in Vietnam and his idolization of the man who wrote, "Imagine all the people living life in peace." Panic attacks are the result of his ambivalence.

As Ballantine, Steven Barkhimer skillfully moves from a one-dimensional dogmatic patriot to an enigmatic philosopher after his encounter with John Lennon causes an epiphany of sorts. In a very funny scene in which Ballantine describes to McLure his dad-to-dad conversation with Lennon over beer and cigarettes, Barkhimer expresses exasperated surprise and reluctant respect at finding that he has so much in common with his "subject." McLure, on the other hand, goes from naïve romantic to hardened cynic after his experiences with Lennon jade him. As McLure, Michael Kaye handles the pain of his character's personal anguish with great sincerity, but his shift from kind-hearted and confused rookie to callous and calculating super agent is too clean edged to be sympathetic. Kaye makes polar opposites out of McLure's conflicting personae. His agent and idealist are two different people, unlike Barkhimer's Ballantine, which is fully integrated.

In "Ears on a Beatle," the rapid march through history from 1971 to 1980 presents a bit of a structural problem for the actors that director Paula Ramsdell doesn't help them overcome completely. At times – particularly when the conversation moves from political to personal – the two men interact with genuine rapport, but in general the brief scenes that chronicle events and act as narrative make it difficult for Barkhimer and Kaye to build momentum or sustain real engagement. A very confining set consisting of two desks facing each other at center stage also seriously constricts their movements.

By weaving hypothetical circumstances surrounding John Lennon's death within the context of information taken verbatim from actual government documents, "Ears on a Beatle" speculates about the extent to which all of that era's assassinations were coincidence versus conspiracy. Unfortunately, any series of facts scrutinized with a paranoid eye will ultimately become distorted and never reveal the truth. There will always be unanswered questions and permanently loose ends. That is the absurdity of counter intelligence run amok. That is also the message of St. Germain's play.

Though "Ears on a Beatle" does not ask any questions that are new, the ways in which they are left unanswered make for thought-provoking theater. The production at Boston's Lyric Stage is worth the mental exercise.

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