There’s a core of irresistibly tuneful songs in “The Who’s Tommy” which have drawn in followers for greater than half a century, first with the rock band’s pioneering 1969 double album, then the 1975 film model that turned sensory assault into a movie style, after which the inventively mounted 1993 stage adaptation, which on the time was claimed to supply sufficient game-changing rock authenticity to lure again to Broadway the viewers that the rock n roll revolution had stolen away. That didn’t fairly occur: The present ran for a decent however unspectacular 26 months.

 Now that outdated musical is getting its first Broadway revival, opening tonight on the Nederlander, the place “Hire” reigned for a dozen years. Given rock’s ascendancy on the Rialto over time — not simply in “Hire” however the a number of revivals of “Hair,” in addition to the extra uncooked “Hedwig” and “American Fool” and “Jagged Little Capsule” and “Six”… — it could be arduous to argue  that “Tommy” stands out as a unique form of musical. However within the new manufacturing, helmed by the unique director and co-librettist Des McAnuff, these songs have misplaced none of their enchantment. This isn’t simply due to their catchy melodies. When Tommy sings “See me, really feel me, contact me, heal me,” the music means that the rock opera radiates real feeling beneath its loud, busy, oft-impenetrable  floor.

“Tommy’ begins beguilingly as dance theater, a sequence of wordless vignettes, cleverly underscored by an overture and enhanced by Lorin Latarro choreography, establishing the backstory that results in Tommy’s life-changing trauma. In an airfield throughout World Struggle II, Captain Walker of the Royal Air Pressure meets a welder, who lifts her iron masks and shakes free her stunning hair. Sparks fly. They marry. Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs) ships off to battle, the place he’s captured and imprisoned. Again in London, the pregnant Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff) is informed her husband is lacking. 4 years later, Mrs. Walker has taken a lover (Nathan Lucrezio), and is elevating four-year-old Tommy (portrayed on the efficiency I attended by diminutive Cecelia Ann Popp) when Captain Walker, newly liberated, returns residence. A battle ensues, the lover bodily threatens Mrs. Walker with a chair, and the Captain shoots him useless (which is likely one of the adjustments from the story within the authentic album, the place the stepfather kills the daddy.) 

Realizing Tommy has witnessed the killing, watching it via an ominous mirror, his mother and father implore him in music:

You didn’t hear it
You didn’t see it
You received’t say nothing to nobody.

From that second on, Tommy turns into deaf, mute, and blind. (the unreconstructed lyrics name him “useless, dumb and blind.”)

Jacobs and Luff, dependable Broadway veterans, are efficient in expressing their mounting frustration and despair as they seek the advice of one physician after one other, and their little one exhibits no enchancment in connecting to them or the skin world. They carry out a sequence of more and more heartbreaking songs, which aren’t as well-known as those that made the charts, however have clever lyrics that anchor the story in a convincing actuality. That actuality turns brutal when Uncle Eddie (John Ambrosino)  molests Tommy (“Fiddle about, fiddle about, fiddle about”), and Cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte) bodily abuses him, treating him like a toy (“you received’t be a lot enjoyable/being blind deaf and dumb/however I’ve nobody to play with at this time”)

The story takes a surreal flip when, as a goof, Kevin sticks Tommy at a pinball machine on the native youth middle. And Tommy seems to be a, nicely, wizard at pinball – cue the chart-topping music “Pinball Wizard.”

Pete Townshend revealed years in the past that he was each abused and molested as a toddler, and he realized  looking back that these experiences labored their means into the rock opera he conceived and  composed (with assist from bandmates) in his early twenties. However he turned Tommy right into a savant at pinball due to Nik Cohn, a document critic for The Guardian, who was a pinball fanatic – both as a result of Cohn recommended it, or to curry favor with him. Or each? (Accounts differ.)

That is the place “Tommy” begins to lose its footing,  and the present begins to really feel much less diligent in its storytelling, and extra like a rock live performance. When a hawker (Sheldon Henry) entices Mr. Walker to carry Tommy to a gypsy girl who’s “obtained the ability to heal you by no means worry,” this cues the music “Acid Queen.” And whereas one can think about Tommy’s determined household would hunt down different therapies, it’s arduous to see the quantity as greater than an excuse for an over-the-top Tina Turner-like sonic explosion — carried out by Tina Turner herself within the film, right here by six-time Broadway veteran Christina Sajous.

Equally, because the oldest of the three Tommys, the fresh-cheeked rocker Ali Louis Bourzgui in his Broadway debut units his songs ablaze, however the character he portrays turns into more and more opaque. He turns from disabled youth to miraculously cured younger grownup to rock star-like celeb to cult chief, and “Tommy” transitions  from dramatizing the impact of trauma on a toddler to an excessively acquainted meditation on celeb to a imprecise evocation of a dystopian future, with Tommy’s followers turning into followers turning into…enforcers? Sarafina Bush’s costumes change from practical if vivid mid-twentieth century English working class to vaguely militaristic, and vaguely futuristic, with steel visors. Lorin Latarro’s choreography, so clear and expressive within the earlier scenes, turns regimented and menacing. Peter Nigrini’s projections, which earlier featured newspaper headlines and newsreel-like black and white movies, initiatives Tommy’s face Massive Brother-like on massive screens, whereas lighting designer Amanda Zieve unleashes the form of seizure-inducing gentle exhibits frequent to area rock concert events.

Townshend has stated the entire present is a metaphor, impressed by the late Meher Baba, who was his non secular instructor, about how “we’re deaf, dumb and blind to our non secular facet.”  

That could be his inspiration, however the breakdown into intimidating and incoherent spectacle felt like a nod to the Who’s classic antics, once they would finish their gig smashing up their musical devices.

The Who’s hardcore followers might like these hard-charging spectacles probably the most in “Tommy.”  There are definitely some terrific stage results. However  I admire the few quieter moments – possibly these mirror the spirituality that Townshend was aiming for — when Quinten Kusheba (who portrayed the ten-year-old Tommy on the night time I attended) sings a piercingly clear rendition of “See me, hear me” with none of the rock noise. And when your entire solid traces up for a pure, inviting rendition of —

Listening to you I get the music,
Gazing at you I get the warmth…
On you I see the glory —

— from them, I do get the story.

(Simply to be clear: Pete Townshend doesn’t carry out on Broadway.)

The Who’s Tommy
Nederlander Theater
Working time: Two hours ten minutes, together with one intermission
Tickets: $70-$250
Music and lyrics by Pete Townshend, e book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreographed by Lorin Latarro, music supervision and extra preparations by Ron Melrose, music route and extra orchestrations by Rick Fox, orchestrations by Steve Margoshes, set design by David Korins, projection design by Peter Nigrini, costume design by Sarafina Bush, lighting design by Amanda Zieve, sound design by Gareth Owen, wig and hair design by Charles LaPointe 
Solid: Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy, Alison Luff as Mrs. Walker, Adam Jacobs as Captain Walker, John Ambrosino as Uncle Ernie, Bobby Conte as Cousin Kevin, and Christina Sajous as The Acid Queen.  Haley Gustafson, Jeremiah Alsop, Ronnie S. Bowman Jr., Mike Cannon, Tyler James Eisenreich, Sheldon Henry, Afra Hines, Aliah James, David Paul Kidder, Tassy Kirbas, Lily Kren, Quinten Kusheba, Reese Levine, Brett Michael Lockley, Nathan Lucrezio, Alexandra Matteo, Mark Mitrano, Reagan Pender, Cecilia Ann Popp, Daniel Quadrino, Olive Ross-Kline, Jenna Nicole Schoen, Dee Tomasetta, and Andrew Tufano.
Photographs by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman