  Spent all day at the museum. NY Public Library Tommy Before I saw this show, I'd owned the double album which we used to listen to at college parties, and of course I'd seen the movie with Elton John and Tina Turner, also in college. My opinion of the album is that there were only a few songs that I could sing along with, and that basically it went on so long that by the time you got to the end of it, I had sort of forgotten that it was still playing. I did not know that they had already turned the album into a Broadway musical in the 1993. My husband knew but didn't get to see it when it came to Texas because he was out on tour. That show was nominated for 11 Tonys and won five of them and ran for two years. The 2023 revival was clearly a 30th anniversary nod to the original. It was only nominated for one Tony--Best Revival, which it didn't win, and is now closing after 132 performances. So I went into this show with certain expectations that weren't met. Was that fair? Probably not. I am not a mega Who fan like my husband, who is himself a rock musician and frequently got compared to Keith Moon back in the day, although he always denied his style was anything like him, he preferred to think of himself as Phil Rudd of AC/DC. Anyway, the point is that the 1975 movie, directed by Ken Russell, is kind of a mess, a lot like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was a huge mess, and I expected that the musical version would clear some things up for me. Those expectations were met. If you know anything about the album at all, you know it's about child abuse. Here's an article about the 50th anniversary of the album that talks about his experiences, in case you didn't know. Pete Townshend suffered horrific abuse at the hand of his grandmother and her boyfriend, when he was sent to live with her during a difficult period in his parents' marriage, who were themselves heavy drinkers and fought a lot. His grandmother and boyfriend inspired Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie. She tried to drown him in the bathtub when he was six and her boyfriend sexually abused him. So it's one thing to watch adult Roger Daltry portray the character of Tommy in a movie, but another thing entirely to watch two small children play the role and take the abuse from adults live onstage. It made me hyper aware of the horrors of child abuse in a way that the movie never could. The chorus literally picked up Tommy bodily and basically carried him around and manipulated him almost the entire show. Tommy's body was stiff as a board and the chorus moved his head and limbs and put him into poses like a barbie doll. So in that way, I understood the album much better than any number of listening sessions or film screenings would have done for me. The adult Tommy was played by Ali Louis Bourzgui, who resembled Rami Malek. Tommy was Bourzgui's first Broadway appearance. The six year old Tommy was played by a tiny little girl and the ten year old Tommy was played by a boy. The both wore wigs to match the adult Tommy's hair. The scenic design gives Tron vibes. There were six lit from within beams, four horizontal (2 pairs of 2) and two vertical that moved independently of each other and served to frame the stage as well as "crop" the stage picture in to focus attention on the action. There was very little actual scenery as seems to be the case more and more these days. They did have several pinball machines but I was disappointed to see that they were just blank tables with empty frames on one end so that Tommy could face the audience but we could still see his face. There was also lot of projected scenery that served as location clues, such as a black and white photograph of rows of houses when we were in Tommy's neighborhood. The best use of the projections however, was in the beginning during the "war" phase of the exposition. The interior of Captain Walker's airplane is projected onto the scrim behind the actors who are sitting on the floor in their flight suits and parachute packs. In the dark a trap door must have opened so that when the men get up to jump, they fall through the trap door. It was so effective that I believed they were jumping out of a plane that was high in the air. The trick with the two way mirror was also really well done. Tommy frequently sings to himself in the mirror and the audience can see him reflected in it but we can also see his other selves in it as well. Then the climactic mement when his mother smashes the mirror with a chair must also be a projection because you know they wouldn't have had shards of glass everywhere. There was also quite a bit of live video feed during the show especially in Act 2 when Tommy is healed and he then is performing for his fans. I think my major problem with the whole show was that the abuse was too in your face. I was actually kind of bored. At its core, even though it was the first Rock Opera, it's not a rock and roll concert as much as it is a survivor's diary. There were just long bits of music with no singing and without a band onstage to watch play. Divorced from the stardom of an actual Who concert, or even Elton John and Tina Turner, it's not a nice story. And these days, does pinball even translate anymore? I grew up playing pinball at the one and only machine at the American Legion pool hall/bar that my dad would hang out in after a round of golf. But then Atari was invented and we never looked back. From the Official Broadway websiteWHO’S TOMMY WALKER? By Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff (the director of both the original and revival productions) Tommy Walker becomes traumatized at the age of four. He goes through a series of events that lead him to a “Locked In” condition. His father seems to come back from the dead and if that’s not shocking enough, Tommy witnesses his father shooting his mother’s lover, who has been serving as a kind of stepfather to Tommy. Not only this, his father and his mother instruct him to lie about the event, telling him, “You didn’t see it, you didn’t hear it, you won’t say nothing to no one ever in your life.” On top of these horrendous occurrences, Tommy is taken through an extremely distressing trial and begins his journey through the world of medicine and therapy that’s no less upsetting. Over the course of the play, the state that he’s in leads to terrible treatment in society, abuse and bullying, and the awfulness of that is portrayed vividly in the story. From the early days of Tommy, Juliet Alvin from the Guildhall College of Music who began Music Therapy was consulted and felt strongly that Tommy was not neurodiverse but rather neurotypical. The condition that he descends into before he breaks through the surface of reality when his mother smashes the mirror can be described as Conversion Disorder. There is no underlying neurologic condition for Conversion Disorder, which is sometimes called Functional Neurologic Disorder. This condition is rare, but it certainly occurs in extreme cases of trauma with neurotypical children, and for that matter, adults. There is a quote from The Specialist in Tommy during “Go to the Mirror,” where he says: “His eyes can see, his ears can hear, his lips can speak All the time the needles flick and rock No machine can give the kind of stimulation Needed to remove his inner block.” Tommy is, of course, a contemporary fable and does not intend to be a documentary or a medical textbook. It is a work of fiction. If Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye rejected adult life, Tommy rejects existence as we know it. This makes him in some ways the ultimate rebel, the antihero ground zero, as our colleague, dramaturg Chad Sylvain, called him. Just as important to our story as the trauma is Tommy’s emergence as a charismatic leader or, in today’s terms “influencer,” as a vast group of fans and followers attempt to recreate his darkness and silent state in order to reach mystical enlightenment. This is Tommy’s second major epiphany in the play, and it’s no less meaningful than his decline into and ascent out of Conversion Disorder. This revelation leads Tommy to turn against his acolytes. Both of us have experience in our personal lives with autism, volunteer mutism, and other psychological states. We understand that often there are parallels in the symptoms between the various conditions that people can suffer through, including catatonic behavior. Over the years, there has been consultation not only by Music Therapy, but also with the non-profit group Nordoff-Robbins, which The Who supported as an acknowledgment that music was a potent force in Tommy as therapy. Since that time, we have engaged the advice of the late Dr. David Levine of Columbia University and Dr. Martijn Figee of Mt. Sinai Hospital on matters concerning trauma and Conversion Disorder. Dr. Gabor Maté, in his book The Myth of Normal, writes about the fact that trauma can lead to many disorders, including Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Both of us have experienced trauma, abuse, and bullying. As artists, we find the most effective way to express that history is in the work itself. Revival TrailerOriginal BRoadway clipsKen Russell Movie clipCostume Designer Sarafina Bush
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