By Dale Burrows
For the Enterprise
It was like the thunder and lightning of creation last weekend when the tormented and fragmented consciousness of an autistic child hit Everett Performing Center. The event was the much-heralded arrival of Village Theatre’s “The Who’s Tommy.” Check the Richter scale. The shock waves are still registering.
Based on the English rock band’s 1969 album, this mother of all rock operas foments up out of the limbic region of poet, singer, musician and composer, Pete Townsend’s, fertile mind. It is messianic, visionary and apocalyptic on an epic, almost biblical scale.
But that is only half the experience, the conceptual half.
Leery as I am about quoting public relations managers, Village’s Jacquelyn Rardin is right on the money when she describes “Tommy’s” performance half as “… a cutting-edge, multi-media extravaganza, leveraging sophisticated lighting and video technology.” The light show, the live rock and the constant hailstorm of images and characters in full spin, all swirl you through the multi-dimensional story like a passenger on a bullet train. I’m still catching my breath.
At the core of this planet “Tommy” is Tommy, a typical British kid who at age 4 (Zachary Robinson on opening night), is traumatized into autism. The place is Tommy’s home during his soldier-dad’s homecoming following WW II.
By age 10, Tommy (Bryan Sevener) has been molested, bullied and humiliated into total submission, responding to nothing in any way.
However, in his teenage years — at which point Broadway actor and show headliner, Michael K. Lee, takes over the role of Tommy — Tommy is discovered to have a genius for pinball.
From there on, the story documents Tommy’s rise to messiah status as pinball champion and cult leader to a worldwide following of youthful groupies. It’s a Christ story but multilayered with metaphor, parable and allegory all as compelling now as when first sounded in album form some four decades ago.
No question, Lee gets out Tommy’s painful yearning for normalcy as well as his mean spiritedness when transformed into the cult figure gone drunk with adulation. Lee’s got Mick Jagger’s talent for voice, acting and dance. Terrific.
But for sheer showmanship, Lisa Estridge’s The Gypsy doing “Acid Queen” explodes you into a LSD-inspired lair of grotesque acid heads situated somewhere in Dante’s Inferno, on the shores of the river Lethe. It’s a ghoulish nightmare you can’t deny but one you’d like to awaken from the sooner the better.
Brandon O’Neill and Catherine Carpenter Cox add the grinding-down power of Townsend’s brutal vocals to Tommy’s parents’ bottomless guilt and endless frustrations.
Matt Wolfe is the liquor-guzzling sleaze, Uncle Ernie, who pets Tommy while child-sitting.
Jadd Davis profiles the cousin who belittles autistic Tommy with immunity. Autistic kids don’t tattle.
Jennifer Paz is the groupie searching for somebody to believe in.
Timothy McCuen Piggee’s singing voice and stage presence communicate unassailable authority in Piggee’s dual roles of medical Specialist and church Minister.
The Who’s raw energy gets translated into high voltage body language by the hyped-up dance ensemble, choreography by Kathryn Van Meter. Tim Symons musical directing of the rock band performing undercover in the orchestra pit screams “The Who.” If the album doesn’t pale by comparison, it’s close.
Who’d have guessed one man could move Woodstock circa 1969 Who style, with a Broadway presence, from Issaquah to Everett? Director, Brian Yorkey, did, does and will for the next two weekends.
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at grayghost7@comcast.net.
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