This spring, it's time to go on an "Amazing Journey." The first revival of The Who's TOMMY on Broadway, created by Tony Award® winners Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff, reinvents the five-time Tony®-winning rock musical for a new generation
Meet Tommy, the pinball wizard. As both a groundbreaking album and a spectacular stage show, the mythic yet moving story of how Tommy goes from a troubled child to pinball prodigy to local celebrity continues to exhilarate audiences with songs like “I’m Free,” “See Me, Feel Me,” “We're Not Gonna Take It,” and “Pinball Wizard.”
Experience The Who's timeless hits anew in this critically acclaimed production, now in a reimagined, technologically stunning new staging by original director/co-creator McAnuff. As Chicago Concert Review raved, "One of the most iconic concept collections makes history all over again."
The deaf and blind would miss a great deal of what makes Tommy work, but it might actually help to be a little dumb. It’s best, at least, not to think too hard about this show, which is dramaturgically unwieldy—drawn out in the first act, rushed and overstuffed in the second—and sometimes doesn’t make sense. (McAnuff sets a big chunk of it in “the future,” which the projections make clear is our future, even though the action is explicitly set in post–World War II England.) And yet, despite these problems, the show works, and its epic choral finale somehow feels genuinely rousing and healing. As musical theater, Tommy is limited. On its own terms, it’s often sensational.
Today, though, unless you’re a die-hard fan who thrills automatically to every lick and lyric, you may want something that calls itself musical theater to offer more than a full-tilt assault on the senses. This production — directed, like the original, by Des McAnuff — won’t provide that, being less interested in trying to put across the story (by McAnuff and Townshend) than in obscuring it with relentless noise and banal imagery.
Digital Lottery:
Price: $40
Where: https://lottery.broadwaydirect.com/show/tommy-ny
When: Entries for the digital lottery open at 9:00am EST one day before the performance.
Limit: Two per customer
Information: Winners are drawn the same day at 3:00pm EST and will have one hour to pay for their tickets online.
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