It's been a long, wild trip since 1969, when the opening chords of Pete Townshend's "Tommy," written with and recorded by the Who, first blasted onstage. The band toured the genre-defying album a seeker's rock opera in which a "deaf, dumb, and blind kid" discovers a messianic gift for pinball-for several years. Throughout the next decade, other artists took a crack at the Who's material: there was a ballet, a symphony, and Ken Russell's nutterbutter psychedelic film, in 1975. Then, about fifteen years after the Who had more or less put "Tommy" away, the director Des McAnuff convinced Townshend that, together, they could turn it into a musical. The result smashed onto Broadway in 1993. A whole bunch of folks won Tony Awards; certainly, everybody made money. So, thirty years later, here we are again.
Or, rather, we're trying to be there again. Which "there"-the seventies? the nineties? may depend on your age. It will also depend on whether your "Tommy" preferences lean toward the rawness of the band's concerts (which the lead singer, Roger Daltrey, once referred to fondly as a "bum note and a bead of sweat") or toward Broadway's glossy, show-and-alsotell approach. Is it a good idea to act out the lyrics of a song about a mystical drugged-out prostitute? Responses will vary. Either way, now at the Nederlander, nostalgia is being delivered by brute force. Before this outing, I had never seen "The Who's Tommy" in a theatre, but when I heard the overture's guitar chords, hissing with cymbals, I felt a shudder of false memory. The sound designer Gareth Owen has added a recording of a roaring crowd to the performance's first few moments, and I found myself remembering stadiums that I'd never been in. But, yeesh, then the show gets going.
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin April 08, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin April 08, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.
