How did we get here from there? The Who’s Tommy, like its central character, has taken possibly the most circuitous route in the history of musical theatre to arrive at St Kilda’s Palais Theatre, in an Australian premiere production by Victorian Opera. It started life in 1968 as a concept album, and arguably became the defining example of rock opera. Over the years, it would transmogrify into an increasingly baroque series of symphonic concerts and then a 1975 film directed by the king of excess, Ken Russell. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Who’s Pete Townshend adapted it into a Broadway musical, for better and for worse.
Tommy is the story of a “deaf, dumb and blind kid” who, traumatised by an act of violence as a child, suffers from a kind of locked-in syndrome that is never adequately explained. He rises to fame as a pinball wizard and eventually becomes a cult leader, a position he finally rejects. It’s heavily influenced by the teachings of Indian spiritualist Meher Baba and, depending on your taste, is either the final word on countercultural self-actualisation or a pretentious pseudo-religious dirge.
Townshend, in adapting the material into a musical, has clarified the dramatic action but also somewhat neutered its central theme; the satirical edges of the story have been blunted, the provocations that made it seem so radical at the time sanitised beyond recognition. Russell pushed the work into garishly surreal territory, and Townshend seems to have brought it back not so much to its original state, but to a kind of anodyne halfway house. It isn’t disastrous, but it makes for a far safer night in the theatre.
