About This Show
The Who’s Tommy is Pete Townshend’s semi-autobiographical musical, featuring a book by Townshend and Des McAunuff and additional music and lyrics by John Entwistle and Keith Moon. One of the most pivotal musicals ever produced, the show is a roaring rip of a ride through the 1960s, a tale of drugs, celebrity and painful, illusory transcendence. Eight-year-old Tommy is rendered catatonic after witnessing his father murdering his mother’s lover. For the next 14 years, he is tempted, taunted, used, abused and emotionally abandoned. Director Jared Coseglia paints a darkly vibrant canvas of the violence and meaningless acquisition of celebrity in Western culture, then and now, in this contemporary vision of Townshend’s revolutionary rock opera. Coseglia’s production is an updated take on the playwright’s prophetic view of the future we now live in and is just as hard driving, exciting and complex as it was in 1969.
There is a special 2pm matinee on Saturday, July 19.
There is a Talk-Back performance on Monday, July 21.