Collin Matthew Flanagan and Ensemble (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
Reviewed by Dana Martin
Pantages Theater
Through November 15th
The Who’s Tommy, now playing at the Pantages in Hollywood, is all spectacle. Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff’s rock opera, debuted in 1969, is loud, raucous, slick, and ultimately lacking substance.
England, World War II. Mrs. Walker (Mia Bergstrom) gives birth to a son while her husband, Royal Air Force Captain Walker (Zach Fogel), is deployed. Presumed dead after going missing in combat, Captain Walker’s absence leads Mrs. Walker to begin a new relationship. So when Captain Walker unexpectedly returns home after the war, he finds another man occupying his place in the family. After a brief altercation, Captain Walker kills him. Young Tommy (Mari Grossman) witnesses the murder, and both parents plead with him to say that he neither saw nor heard anything. Deeply traumatized, Tommy (Collin Matthew Flanagan) becomes mute and fixates on his reflection in the mirror. As he grows older, further trauma compounds his isolation: he is assaulted by his alcoholic Uncle Ernie (Peyton Cassity), bullied by his cousin Kevin (Kyle McFalls), and taken by his father to a seedy prostitute, the Acid Queen (Kris Lyons). Unable to process his experiences, Tommy finds an outlet in pinball, becoming a wizard at the game and, eventually, amassing a cult-like following.
Peter Nigrini’s projection design is what makes this rock opera pop. Nigrini’s projections distort the audience’s perspective and storytelling in ways that are very rock-and-roll and MTV-style cool. The forced, skewed perspectives, outlined with neon accent colors create striking visuals and coupled with Amanda Zieve’s dramatic lighting lends much to the rock concert atmosphere. Sarafina Bush’s costumes are mostly black and white with carefully placed pops of color evoking the feeling of Dorothy-from-Kansas. Lorin Latarro’s highly stylized, slickly mechanical choreography befits the visual language.
Des McAnuff’s direction is certainly bombastic, and the story’s fast pace is mostly well suited to the evening (it is a rock opera, after all), but the relentless energy is exhausting. That, coupled with the askew sound mix, creates a dizzying experience. Gareth Owen’s sound design is obscured by the overpowering band making it nearly impossible to hear what the actors are singing when the music reaches full volume, which is most of the time. Even from the fifth row, attempting to decipher the lyrics is futile.
The cast is solid, though there is no clear standout. The musical moves so quickly that no one has an opportunity to let a moment land. Flanagan plays the title role well enough (though I probably wouldn’t join his cult). Young Tommy, ages four through ten, is played by the very adult Grossmann. There is nothing necessarily wrong with an adult playing a child, but the casting choice is strange given the outsized attention to visual spectacle. Why a touring musical would spend so much money on tech and touring only to miscast the title role is just puzzling.
The Who’s Tommy is an intense high-octane evening, peppered with slick aesthetics. With the band consistently overshadowing the vocals, the audience is left with plenty to look at and very little of the story to grasp. It is ultimately an entertaining evening if approached as a rock concert, even though the story itself is lost in the noise.
Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Tues.-Thurs., 7:30pm; Fri., 8 pm; Sat. 2 pm & 8 pm; Sun. 1 pm & 6:30 pm; thru Nov. 15th. Runtime: One hour and 40 minutes with no intermission. https://www.broadwayinhollywood.com/
