Word: shows
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Rosenberg, on guitars and as the narrator, played his first solo directly after his A string snapped. His stint as narrator, singing "Captain Walker," "Amazing Journey" and "Sally Simpson" were all acceptable, if not spectacular. John Arimand, on electric and slide guitar played a solid lead throughout the show. As the pinball wizard he overlaid his own lead with a rendition of "Wizard" that was, fortunately the Daltry, not the Elton John interpretation. Chad Balch, on drums, had perhaps the hardest act to follow. After all, Keith Moon will stay dead an awfully long time. He, and the rest...
...might have seemed a week and a half ago that this show would be destined for the ash-heap of Harvard theater. Not only did the cast and crew have to accomodate themselves to a significantly smaller set than the dismantled Dudley House version, but the show itself is incredibly difficult to stage in any theater. It is, after all, not a musical, or even a rock "opera;" it most closely approximates an oratorio. The Who's lyrics barely outline plot and characters; the music gives them their force...
Fittingly enough then, the band is the star of this show. You'll like them if you liked The Who, a band I like very much. Tommy is the closest thing around to rock's Messiah, and it is as sacreligious to rape the "Acid Queen" as it would be to rearrange the Hallelujah chorus. The band is tight, clean, and faithful to the original...
This is not to disparage the band as a set of Who-parrots. They displayed coolness and professionalism throughout the performance, surviving broken guitar strings early in the show and a series of minor technical mishaps, possibly induced by the alien setting...
SOME OF Drury's staging is quite effective. The set, a bare stage and a series of simple backdrops, is perfectly adequate as a frame for the Who's work. Some of the tableaux used by Drury early in the show are starkly evocative of the emotions of Tommy's early life. But the static presentation at the beginning of the show becomes boring. After more characters appear on stage, the drama becomes complicated enough to demand some movement on stage beyond that of a chorus wheeling in straight lines, or squatting, then standing, in unison...