"The Who's Tommy" at the DCPA

I may be the only person introduced to the Who by Pete Townshend's solo work, but that's what happens when your parents' musical tastes run toward West Coast cool jazz and show tunes and you're the oldest kid in your family. My attention was caught by tracks from The Iron Man: The Musical on Washington D.C.'s classic rock station; when I bought the album, I found the Who's tracks less interesting than Pete Townshend's performance of "A Friend Is a Friend." I went on, as only an obsessed teenager can, to collect all his solo albums and carefully analyze and annotate every song. It was only after some years that I decided I should probably pay some heed to the music he wrote for his band as well.

Tommy needs no explanation (and there's no point explaining it to the people who might need it explained). The Who's legendary concept album has again been revived as a stage musical, this time by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Theatre Companion and I found cheap tickets and so brought along Thing 1 for a show the other night; the latter is now at the perfect age (14) to be introduced to the incomparable rock'n'roll genius of Pete Townshend, and was appropriately impressed by the music and lyrics. Tommy's plot, while convoluted, is relatively easy to follow. At the same time, its philosophical points are comprehensible only through a close reading via the lens of the rather incomprehensible Meher Baba, so I had no concerns that Thing 1 might be led down the perfidious path of eastern mysticism.

As Thing 1 observed, this production of Tommy is better characterized as an opera than a musical, as there are only a few lines of spoken dialogue. Some of the album's songs were dropped, while others were rewritten or given additional lyrics to better fit this version of the story. I had no complaints on that front other than with "1921," which makes no sense in that this production is set after World War II, whereas the original was set after World War I. (During "1921," I was so confused that I though I must have been misunderstanding the actors. I wasn't.)

Once one gets past the fact that one is watching a musical, rather than listening to the Who, the performances in this production are uniformly strong. The three actors playing Tommy at different ages appeared together on stage more than once, enabling the audience to participate in Tommy's hallucinatory take on his reality. Given my druthers, I'd have preferred to see the musicians, who were hidden from view. I imagine they might have distracted from the action, but I find it exceedingly difficult to listen to "Pinball Wizard" without watching a guitarist.

This production of Tommy proves the material's strength: one need not be a fan of the Who in order to be thoroughly impressed.