Review: TOMMY Brings Sound and Fury at Pittsburgh Playhouse

It's impossible to talk about The Who's legendary rock opera/movie/musical/concert tour Tommy without talking about rock auteur Pete Townshend, especially since the past decades have revealed details about his troubled youth and personal life. Townshend was apparently caught with child pornography, then found "not guilty" when he confessed to his own molestation as a kid, with the illicit materials being part research for memoirs (released a few years ago as Who I Am), part coping mechanism. At once, the pieces fell into place- there's almost no Townshend or Who record that doesn't include veiled or explicit references to coping with child sexual trauma and the effect it can have on the developing psyche and sexuality. Nowhere is this subtext made more textual than in Townshend's legendary first rock opera Tommy, which becomes increasingly impossible to read from anything but a biographical lens: "I was molested, abused, tormented, belittled and manipulated as a child, but I grew up, gave up drugs, found God and turned out okay... right? Right?"

But don't let that high-minded backstory fool you: Tommy is no How I Learned to Drive; it's a high-energy, anachronistic, gleefully random allegory for... something, the kind of nonsensical, dense rock opera that gained the genre a reputation for being, well, nonsensical and dense. It's also huge fun, as long as you can let go of the niggling sensation that you're watching Townshend's free-association therapy session. Though the show is light on anything one can call substance in good conscience, Zeva Barezell's high-energy production, and the triple threats of Point Park's Conservatory Theatre Company, give it their all.

The story, as it were, concerns the quasi-messianic Tommy Walker (Lamont Walker II), who as a child (played first by Primo Jenkins, then Gabriel Florentino as an adolescent), saw his parents (Matt Calvert and Kylie Klass) kill a man in self-defense in the aftermath of World War II. Traumatized by the event, the boy grows catatonic, and is assumed to be deaf, dumb and blind- though, to a modern observer, his condition looks a LOT more like severe autism. Unable or unwilling to respond to the outside world, seemingly uncurable, Tommy becomes a burden to his parents, a punching bag for his neer-do-well cousin Kevin (David Lindsay), and a sexual plaything to both his alcoholic uncle Ernie (Kevin Gilmond) and a drug-addled prostitute (Markia Washington). With the help of mental visions of his future self (Walker II), Tommy Responds to one thing only- say it with me now- pinball. When he grows up and is suddenly cured, he becomes a pop-cultural sensation, sparking a concert tour, a gift shop, a holiday camp and eventually a quasi-religious movement, until he freaks out and tears it all down. Has Tommy found meaning, or begun retreating back into his old catatonia? The ending is left open to interpretation. (For those who might worry I spoiled the storyline, fear not: Tommy is a famously abstract work, and many productions include a similar summary in the libretto to make sense of it all.)

Since there's not a lot there beyond sketches or grotesques of characters, much of the burden falls on the cast to make us care about these characters. As the largest roles in the show, with the most stage time to develop their characters, Calvert and Klass make Captain and Mrs. Walker into believable and almost relatable characters. Up until Tommy's rebirth midway through Act 2, Mrs. Walker is the lead in all but name, and Klass's portrayal of the harried mother of a severely autistic child is good enough to be in a show that takes such a character seriously. Many of the other roles in the show have flashier material, but parts that are all but impossible to play- Lamont Walker II's adult Tommy nails the messianic rock-star side of the character, but seems almost too well-adjusted; there's no real indication that this guy, swaggering and posing like a fusion of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix via Richard Roundtree, has been through a series of scarring life experiences and barely made it through alive, let alone sane. He is, paradoxically, so cool he's almost too cool, so messianic that he's too messianic.

Tommy suffers from a certain lack of hindsight- the villains, more than get away scot-free, are forgiven so thoroughly it's like they never wronged the lead at all. (It's frankly a little disturbing, but probably relates to Townshend's own coping with trauma.) As such, Kevin Gilmond gets the strange privilege of playing a cuddly, lovable child molester, your typical funny drunk uncle who looks like Elton John and maybe kinda sexually abused a disabled kid ONCE. Gilmond's seedy charm during "Tommy's Holiday Camp" is infectious, though it's best not to think too deeply into the character he's playing. For perhaps related reasons, David Lindsay's Cousin Kevin is less brutal and sociopathic than the outright psycho Paul Nicholas played in the film- though he roughs Tommy up a little (or a lot), he is not only forgiven but rewarded for his transgressions. The supporting cast all play multiple roles, with JarEd Roberts as a pimp, a street punk and a DJ, and Mei Lu Barnum as a schoolgirl and a nurse the most memorable among them.

Is Tommy perfect? Certainly not, but as a classic rock fan then and now, it's the show that got me into musical theatre, and it's one I hold a soft spot for. If you've never seen the show before, there's no time like the present, as Pittsburgh Playhouse is also hosting four legendary pinball machines beloved by arcade aficionados. Getting to play the official Tommy pinball machine AT a production of Tommy was one of my nerdy dreams come true, and I strongly recommend that double feature to anyone.

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