Lennon musical on the way to Broadway

A musical exploring the life of John Lennon is on the way to Broadway after his widow Yoko Ono gave her blessing to the project, it emerged today.

Tracking his change from rocker to meditation guru, 12 actors will play the different personalities of the former Beatle.

Most of the songs which will feature in the production, yet to be named, will be hits penned by Lennon after the Beatles broke up.

The show’s producers, Edgar Lansbury and Don Scardino, who are calling the musical The Lennon Project for the time being, said about 30 of his songs would be featured.

The show is planned to arrive in New York in time for the 2004-05 Broadway season.

“Our project is the story of Lennon as a lighting rod and how he defined the times and how the times defined him,” Scardino told Daily Variety Magazine.

“Lennon’s changes corresponded to our generation. There was the rocker, the hippie, the meditation guru, the transcendentalist, the political revolutionary, the house husband, and all the while there was the evolving artist,” he said.

The project has already been three years in the making.

Lansbury said they were negotiating with Sony for the rights to the song Give Peace a Chance, which Lennon recorded with the Plastic Ono Band but which is credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Other songs which could feature are Imagine, Working Class Hero and Whatever Gets You Through the Night.