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The Who’s rock opera 'Tommy' is, in many ways, of its time: the plot, about a boy who shuts off from the world following the trauma of seeing his father shot, only to become a pinball wizard and cultish celebrity, is pretty crazy, while the free-wheeling score is often just crazy good. But its presentation of disability is of its moment too – even the famous line 'that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball' isn't one librettists would exactly reach for in 2017.
This disabled-led production by the touring Ramps on the Moon theatre consortium absolutely makes it work. Their 'Tommy' is a joyous show, blasting you full in the face with a suitably loud live band and a vigorous, zesty ensemble cast of 22.
Kerry Michael’s production also offers a gold standard for accessible performance, offering captions and audio description but also a truly engrossing, totally fluid integration of British Sign Language throughout the whole show. This feels absolutely as effective at communicating meaning within a musical as, say, a dance number does (of which there are also many).
Having a cast of differently abled actors can’t help but sharpen your attention to representations of disability, and the blunt treatment Tommy receives from everyone from medical professionals to the media feels here particularly italisced. There are odd new additions that add further to this – one skit sends up the way Hollywood actors are feted for taking on disabled parts in films, for instance.
They also tackle the awkward character of the Acid Queen – a prostitute who promises to heal Tommy using sex’n’drugs while singing rock’n’roll – by having her played by Peter Straker (who appeared in the original stage musical in 1992) as an aging drag queen. With a new song from Pete Townshend too, Straker’s stage-filling performance becomes equal parts grotesque and mournful; it’s much more interesting and less dated than doing a straight sexpot diva rendition.
This is a re-vamp from Ramps, then, but not a re-write: Tommy fans will surely still enjoy the pacy show, even if it does struggle a bit in the second half, where Townshend frankly seems to lose his own plot. But the production mostly makes the material feels fresh, offering new slants where they’re fruitful while remaining absolutely as weird and wonderful as a rock opera about a pinball wizard should be.