Photo by John Lamb
Lindsey Jones, Andrea Kimberling, Antonio Rodriguez, Sarah Porter, Anna Skidis in The Who's Tommy at Stray Dog Theatre.
Who knew (no pun intended) that Tommy was still such a draw? The theatre was packed last Thursday for Stray Dog’s opening night. Call me… umm, young? But I’m not quite sure what the appeal is. To be honest, the whole story is kind of silly, or worse, pretentious. As a young boy, Tommy sees his father kill a man. His parents tell Tommy that he didn't see anything or hear anything, and exhort him not to tell anyone what he saw. After that, he's struck deaf, dumb, and blind.
While his parents search for an answer from doctors and the church (to no avail), everyone around him starts to abuse Tommy, including his Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin. At the local arcade, he becomes a pinball wizard, inspiring envy and admiration. When his mother breaks the mirror that Tommy stands in front of all the time, he's cured and the miracle earns Tommy a cult following. People sit at the feet of the guru to learn from his experience. When he tells them, “If you want to follow me / You've got to play pinball / And put in your earplugs / Put on your eye shades / You know where to put the cork.” His followers decide that playing blind pinball is too high a price to pay for enlightenment and desert him.
Townsend’s concept for the album was at least partially inspired by Meher Baba, an Indian mystic whose teachings encompassed several different theologies (Vedanta, Sufism and Christianity) and who never spoke after July 10, 1925.
If I could sum up my reaction to this opera in one phrase, it would be “Why so serious?” There is nothing about the story that’s really fun, but there’s also nothing about it that makes me want to take it seriously. It’s about a blind kid who can play pinball, for crying out loud. No one feels bad for Tommy when he’s molested by his Uncle Ernie, or abused by his Cousin Kevin, because Tommy’s never more than a symbol of some idea about identity and broken selves.
(I must admit reading Townsend’s rambling, weird explanations of his work in Rolling Stone 40 years after they were printed, didn’t improve my opinion of Tommy.)
While I’m not quite alone in disliking Tommy, I’m also not in good company. Most people think the album was one of the most important and influential ever made.
Stray Dog Theatre’s staging of Tommy was in steampunk style, which was popularized by Kevin O'Neill and Alan Moore in their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, which was set in Victorian era Britain (where steam was still a main source of power, hence the name), but created a completely alternative history—what Britain would have been like if all of the fictional sci-fi stories of that era had been true (Sherlock Holmes had existed, Captain Nemo had made his submarine, etc.). This resulted in the women looking like they worked in a Victorian bordello that catered to vampires and was run by Beetlejuice.
The intrepid 14-member cast had hardly any scene or costume changes, and very few props, but managed to hold your attention for the length of the production (though it ended just as mine was starting to flag). The dancing wasn’t much, but the singing was passable. I’ll be charitable, and say that Paula Stoff Dean, who played Tommy’s mother Mrs. Walker, and Ana Skidis (the Acid Queen gypsy), were just having off nights. Josh Douglas was pretty good as Uncle Ernie, and C.E. Fifer shone in his multiple roles. I wasn’t too razzle-dazzled by Tommy, Antonio Rodriguez, who was a little mopey and not anyone’s idea of a charismatic guru. It was also very difficult to make out what people were singing, which I think is due to SDT's struggle to convert Tower Grove Abbey into a theater.
In the end, I was genuinely perplexed. Sure, we can go through the whole song and dance about how this is about identity and the symbolism of the mirror, but how do you get past the absurdity and the dated feel of it? There’s no nuance, and in the end, it really seems to be about itself. (A feeling that’s only heightened by Stray Dog’s insistence on a style outside of any time period.) I suppose it’s nice for Who fans, though… or for people who want a little traipse down memory lane.
