Pete Townshend’s prescient 1969 rock opera has returned to Broadway in a new, born-in-Chicago production from director Des McAnuff that will sock you right in the gut.
The company of “The Who’s Tommy” on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre in New York. NEW YORK — Pete Townshend’s prescient 1969 rock opera “Tommy,” a horrifying if ultimately transcendent howl of anger and anguish at the damage wrought on the boomer generation by their war-scarred parents, has returned to Broadway in a new, born-in-Chicago production from director Des McAnuff that will sock you right in the gut.
Now, though, the world has spun forward enough times to meet “Tommy” where it always lived, meaning its psychologically oriented story of delayed self-actualization due to childhood trauma, and its withering parody of abusive authority figures and celebrity worship.he wrote “Tommy” to give The Who heft, to find himself as an artist, and to help bring self-awareness to a similarly young audience that had not yet understood either its own experience or what it really wanted out of life.
If you saw the original “Tommy” in 1993, as did I, you’ll otherwise likely see many similarities in terms of McAnuff’s narrative contribution to the storytelling. But the first “Tommy” came from an analog era; this time around Townshend and McAnuff have digital projections to explore, allowing greater fluidity. Peter Nigrini’s projections are some of the best virtual images I’ve ever seen, from a storytelling perspective. They are sufficiently restrained not to compete with the humans.
Adam Jacobs, Daniel Quadrino, Alison Luff, Olive Ross-Kline and the ensemble of"The Who’s Tommy" on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre in New York.
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