I never saw the 1993 smash-hit Broadway musical of The Who’s Tommy,though it ran 900 performances in New York and then had a great success in London and Toronto. But long before it was a musical show, I saw The Who perform their “rock opera” of “Tommy” live twice, and I loved the music.
The piece became a kind of anthem for the Flower Children of the sixties and seventies, and it inspired the big rock musicals that followed. The story of a new kind of hero, a severely handicapped, abused youth who became a “pinball wizard” and a kind of messiah to anti-establishment youth, achieved a powerful emotional following. As potently presented in 23 year-old Pete Townsend’s singing of his story-composition and playing it with The Who’s hard-rockin’ accompaniment, it has sold more than 20 million copies. However it may now be regarded by younger listeners, The Who’s Tommy’s overblown, emotional content in the following lyrics (quoted in this show’s program notes) will reduce a surprising number of old folks to a puddle:
“Listening to you, I get the music;
Gazing at you, I get the heat,
Following you, I climb the mountain.
I get excitement at your feet.”
So I was curious to see how the show worked and what it was like, especially since the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada was performing it with a reportedly elaborate stage production, using new state-of-the-art techniques, but still staged, choreographed, conducted and designed by the original Broadway creators, under the direction of former Stratford artistic director Des McAnuff, who directed and co-wrote the show’s book with Townsend.
Well, it may be an impossible task to make a coherent story onstage of such elaborate fantasies. And, while the use of several children to represent the varying developments of the boy Tommy until they are succeeded by an adult performer as the grown man Tommy is okay story-telling, the device is also distracting. And those “state of the art” tricks, involving everything from flying overhead amid planets to Tommy’s zooming to the top of an enlargement several stories above the stage floor, begin to seem a childish effort to show off. But the music is played at pain-level; the dancing is always entertaining and sometimes thrilling; the singing is mostly first-rate; and I enjoyed the show as a show-off display and a hot rock concert – something between a Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark and an Alice Cooper show.
A couple old enough to be former “Who” fans, but clearly not remotely liking the noisy show, seemed incredulous that I was enjoying the display and the music, though I didn’t think this version of “Tommy” was conveying any coherent ideas or displaying any intent except exhibitionism. I suppose that I should warn those not predisposed to such assaults on their composure that this is not an old-fashioned family show. The original concert version has a raunchy number, “Fiddle About,” sung by the "deaf, dumb, and blind boy"’s adult uncle who molests him -- though that’s rather tamer in this show. But Paul Nolan, who was a lovely, pure Jesus contrasted with the scene-stealing Judas in McAnuff’s exciting Jesus Christ Superstar, here plays Tommy’s truly wicked Cousin Kevin with such evil, amusing relish that I laughed at his display of versatility.
The young boys are adept and winning. Robert Markus has many changes of style as well as character as Tommy and seems not only a multi-talented performer but also an inexhaustible one. And the whole versatile cast manages to “sell” the material well enough to win applause, if not belief in their fantastic carrying on.
And – just to change the tone – all the boys playing Tommy unite with the adult final Tommy in what many in the audience seemed to find a truly moving moment.
I cried only at “See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me.”
