It’s not hard to imagine what might inspire an actor to devise a show around the life and music of John Lennon.

Australian actor John Waters, of Offspring fame, says he doesn’t try to imitate the Beatles icon in his show, Lennon: Through a Glass Onion, but rather channels him, using the songs to drive the narrative.

"Lennon played out his life, including all its lows, in front of the public and so it’s in his songs and it’s in his whole demeanour," Waters explains. 

"He didn’t care if people saw the worst of him, as long as they also knew the best of him, and I really love that about him."

While his show is part-spoken, part-sung – the show is less documentary and more an interpretive tribute to Lennon, to the music, and to a bygone era. Waters grew up in the UK during the 60s, with The Beatles a soundtrack for his generation.

"I think a lot of people who are younger than that generation are a little bit jealous that we lived through that great time in music where it was kind of political, and it was really full on, and I think it was very meaningful," Waters said.

He ties together the show with spoken monologues between songs – the Scouse accent the only nod to Lennon’s physicality embodied by the gravelly-voiced actor bringing him to life.

When he first wrote the show some 24 years ago, he began by mapping out songs that he not only loved, but that were particularly autobiographical. He hopes, when put in context, they shed a little more light on the man behind the icon.

"Julia is a song about his mother – it could be just a love song but it’s a love song to his mother who abandoned him when he was four."

"Lennon discovered her when he was a teenager and just as he got to know her she was run over and killed by a drunken off-duty policeman, so you know he carried that tragedy around and it came out in his songs."

Lennon: Through a Glass Onion might have been romping around various cities for nearly 25 years – making it to the West End and off-Broadway stages along the way – but its creator is still fascinated by its latest incarnation. 

A far cry from large scale music theatre productions he first tread the boards in, or the glamour of Australian television, he says the simple man-and-a-pianist concept was once intimidating, but he now wears it like a skin - but it's bittersweet in many ways. 

"It’s a story about a man who did find redemption because he got all of the violence, anger and bitterness out of himself and became happy, and just at the moment he achieved that, a random lunatic gunned him down…it’s pretty sad."

Lennon: Through a Glass Onion plays at Auckland’s Civic Theatre until Sunday August 14.