Two Views of a Reborn ‘Tommy’ : STAGE REVIEW : The Wizardry of High-Tech Makes It Work

The theater was packed to the proverbial rafters. Outside, a soupy Southern California version of London fog shrouded the city. Inside, the air conditioner broke down. Curtain was delayed by half an hour.

But neither delays nor steamy weather could dampen the sense of Event at Thursday’s opening of the La Jolla Playhouse’s “Tommy,” a new theatrical version of the Who’s 1969 rock opera. And it wasn’t just due to the presence in the audience of the Who’s surviving members or the legion of Who fans (including Liza Minnelli).

The show was the thing.

Revamped by the Who’s Pete Townshend and shaped for the stage by him and Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff, this “Tommy” draws its prodigious energy from the original music. But it has been forged into a roiling, high-tech piece of theatrical wizardry for the ‘90s, in which designers John Arnone (sets) and Wendall Harrington (projections) are as much the stars of the production as the music, actors or director.

“Tommy’s” book, if one can call it that, is slender, barely linear and has always bordered on the mawkish. That still pertains, virtually intact. It tells the story of an autistic child traumatized into silence when he witnesses his father murder his mother’s lover. Despite attempts at treatment, medical and exotic, Tommy’s sealed off from the world. He becomes a wiz pinball machine player in his catatonic state and, at age 23, has an epiphany that heals him.

“Tommy” ends with a dubious messianic trip on the wings of his 15 minutes of celebrity that even includes a Mary Magdalen in the form of Sally Simpson (Hilary Morse) and that he repudiates in favor of a different kind of love. That is the show’s most unsatisfying element--a residue from the ‘60s that stops short of a mass embrace with the audience and whose ambiguity plays crudely in the ‘90s.

This, however, is the only thing that could stand some fixing. The explicitness of this La Jolla version undercuts some of the mystery perpetrated on the imagination by the album (or even the extravagant failure of the 1975 Ken Russell film). Even South Coast Repertory’s 1971 unauthorized and technically primitive storefront edition traded more on surrealism and less on sentiment. But La Jolla clearly had a different agenda.

The show here is one continuous aural and visual orgy, a movable feast of sound and color, flying props, swirling doors, projections and flashing video for the very senses Tommy was so long denied.

At the center of the pyrotechnics is director McAnuff pulling strings like a master puppeteer. He has chosen his company with an obvious care to replicating the Who sound in the singing voices, yet without neglecting acting skill.

Michael Cerveris, in gleaming white (another nod to the show’s childlike symbolism), has great presence and sweetness as the grown-up Tommy. He also interfaces cleverly as Tommy’s alter ego with Nino Pamaran and Carly Jane Steinborn who play Tommy’s younger incarnations. (Arnone and lighting designer Frances Aronson create real magic with backlighting, tinted glass and one-way mirrors that reflect the child in the adult and other such notions.)

Cheryl Freeman is a flash-in-the-pan as the Gypsy in the flashy Acid Queen number, whereas Marcia Mitzman, a forceful singer, manages to convey the complexity of her frustration and guilt as Tommy’s far less prepossessing mother. She and Jonathan Dokuchitz, the tormented father, play well together, unlike the more isolated characters. They, like Tommy, usually function alone or in groups. Example: Paul Kandel’s drunken Uncle Ernie, a music hall type, whose lewdness is suggested rather than explicit, and Anthony Barrile as nasty Cousin Kevin.

A disappointment is Wayne Cilento’s choreography, which is only intermittently compelling (as in the sensational “Sensation” number). The show calls for something as consistently offbeat.

Ultimately, what we remember best are the flashing lights, medical imaging, twirling doors, video prints and whirring propellers (in a memorable impression of a World War II paratroop jump).

If Arnone and Harrington make such immense contributions to the perpetual motion of the piece, it’s in collusion with McAnuff and Townshend, who has publicly stated that he wanted to get away from a traditional rock event.

He has. “Tommy” hasn’t just been updated from WWI to WWII (which, to say the least, makes the song “1921” a puzzlement), it has been turned--not tamed--into a Broadway show. Technical flamboyance replaces mystery, an apt substitution for an electronic (as opposed to metaphysical) age.

A triumph of style over content? No doubt. But a creditable triumph.

“Tommy,” La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 9. $26.75-$32.75; (619) 534-3960, TDD/Voice (619) 534-0351. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Michael Cerveris: Tommy

Jonathan Dokuchitz: Captain Walker

Marcia Mitzman: Mrs. Walker

Paul Kandel: Uncle Ernie

Anthony Barrile: Cousin Kevin

Cheryl Freeman: The Gypsy

Hilary Morse:Sally Simpson

Nino Pamaran: Tommy at 10

Nicky Carin/Carly Jane Steinborn: Tommy at 4

Rick Fitts, Tom Flynn, Dennis Fox, Trisha Gooch, David Harris, Christian Hoff, Donnie Kehr, Lisa Leguillou, Anthony Marciona, Lee Morgan, Rain Pryor, Alice Ripley, Scott Ripley: Ensemble

Joseph Church, Ted Baker, Henry Aronson, Kevin Kuhn, Jeff Sigman, David Kuhn, Luther Rix, Alan Grant, Lorin Getline: Musicians

A La Jolla Playhouse presentation of a new theatrical version of the Who’s “Tommy” adapted by Des McAnuff and Pete Townshend. Director Des McAnuff. Writer-composer Pete Townshend. Sets John Arnone. Projection design Wendall Harrington. Lights Frances Aronson. Costumes David C. Woolard. Sound Steve Kennedy. Musical director Joseph Church. Orchestrations Steve Margoshes. Choreographer Wayne Cilento. Assistant choreographer Lisa Mordente. Fight director Steve Rankin. Dialect coach Susan Leigh. Flying by Foy. Stage manager Frank Hartenstein. Assistant stage manager Jill Larmett.