There is a core of irresistibly tuneful songs in “The Who’s Tommy” that have drawn in fans for more than half a century, first with the rock band’s pioneering 1969 double album, then the 1975 movie version that turned sensory assault into a film genre, and then the inventively mounted 1993 stage adaptation, which at the time was claimed to offer enough game-changing rock authenticity to lure back to Broadway the audience that the rock n roll revolution had stolen away. That didn’t quite happen: The show ran for a respectable but unspectacular 26 months.

 Now that old musical is getting its first Broadway revival, opening tonight at the Nederlander, where “Rent” reigned for a dozen years. Given rock’s ascendancy on the Rialto over the years — not just in “Rent” but the multiple revivals of “Hair,” as well as the more raw “Hedwig” and “American Idiot” and “Jagged Little Pill” and “Six”… — it would be hard to argue  that “Tommy” stands out as a different kind of musical. But in the new production, helmed by the original director and co-librettist Des McAnuff, those songs have lost none of their appeal. This is not just because of their catchy melodies. When Tommy sings “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me,” the song suggests that the rock opera radiates genuine feeling beneath its loud, busy, oft-impenetrable  surface.

“Tommy’ begins beguilingly as dance theater, a series of wordless vignettes, cleverly underscored by an overture and enhanced by Lorin Latarro choreography, establishing the backstory that leads to Tommy’s life-changing trauma. In an airfield during World War II, Captain Walker of the Royal Air Force meets a welder, who lifts her iron mask and shakes free her beautiful hair. Sparks fly. They marry. Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs) ships off to war, where he is captured and imprisoned. Back in London, the pregnant Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff) is told her husband is missing. Four years later, Mrs. Walker has taken a lover (Nathan Lucrezio), and is raising four-year-old Tommy (portrayed at the performance I attended by diminutive Cecelia Ann Popp) when Captain Walker, newly liberated, returns home. A fight ensues, the lover physically threatens Mrs. Walker with a chair, and the Captain shoots him dead (which is one of the changes from the story in the original album, where the stepfather kills the father.) 

Realizing Tommy has witnessed the killing, watching it through an ominous mirror, his parents implore him in song:

You didn’t hear it
You didn’t see it
You won’t say nothing to no one.

From that moment on, Tommy becomes deaf, mute, and blind. (the unreconstructed lyrics call him “dead, dumb and blind.”)

Jacobs and Luff, reliable Broadway veterans, are effective in expressing their mounting frustration and despair as they consult one doctor after another, and their child shows no improvement in connecting to them or the outside world. They perform a series of increasingly heartbreaking songs, which aren’t as well-known as the ones that made the charts, but have intelligent lyrics that anchor the story in a convincing reality. That reality turns brutal when Uncle Eddie (John Ambrosino)  molests Tommy (“Fiddle about, fiddle about, fiddle about”), and Cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte) physically abuses him, treating him like a toy (“you won’t be much fun/being blind deaf and dumb/but I’ve no one to play with today”)

The story takes a surreal turn when, as a goof, Kevin sticks Tommy at a pinball machine at the local youth center. And Tommy turns out to be a, well, wizard at pinball – cue the chart-topping song “Pinball Wizard.”

Pete Townshend revealed years ago that he was both abused and molested as a child, and he realized  in retrospect that these experiences worked their way into the rock opera he conceived and  composed (with help from bandmates) in his early twenties. But he turned Tommy into a savant at pinball because of Nik Cohn, a record critic for The Guardian, who was a pinball enthusiast – either because Cohn suggested it, or to curry favor with him. Or both? (Accounts differ.)

This is where “Tommy” begins to lose its footing,  and the show starts to feel less diligent in its storytelling, and more like a rock concert/live music video. When a hawker (Sheldon Henry) entices Mr. Walker to bring Tommy to a gypsy woman who’s “got the power to heal you never fear,” this cues the song “Acid Queen.” And while one can imagine Tommy’s desperate family would seek out alternative treatments, it’s hard to see the number as anything more than an excuse for an over-the-top Tina Turner-like sonic explosion — performed by Tina Turner herself in the movie, here (not as thrillingly) by six-time Broadway veteran Christina Sajous.

Similarly, as the oldest of the three Tommys, the fresh-cheeked rocker Ali Louis Bourzgui in his Broadway debut sets his songs ablaze, but the character he portrays becomes increasingly opaque. He turns from disabled youth to miraculously cured young adult to rock star-like celebrity to cult leader to….tyrant?…, and “Tommy” transitions  from dramatizing the effect of trauma on a child to an overly familiar meditation on celebrity to a vague evocation of a dystopian future, with Tommy’s fans turning into followers turning into…enforcers? Sarafina Bush’s costumes change from realistic if vivid mid-twentieth century English working class to vaguely militaristic, and vaguely futuristic, with metal visors. Lorin Latarro’s choreography, so clear and expressive in the earlier scenes, turns regimented and menacing. Peter Nigrini’s projections, which earlier featured newspaper headlines and newsreel-like black and white videos, projects Tommy’s face Big Brother-like on large screens, while lighting designer Amanda Zieve unleashes the sort of seizure-inducing light shows common to arena rock concerts.

Townshend has said the whole show is a metaphor, inspired by the late Meher Baba, who was his spiritual teacher, about how “we’re deaf, dumb and blind to our spiritual side.”  

That may be his inspiration, but the breakdown into intimidating and incoherent spectacle felt like a nod to the Who’s vintage antics, when they would end their gigs smashing up their musical instruments.

The Who’s hardcore fans may like these hard-charging spectacles the most in “Tommy.”  There are certainly some terrific stage effects. But  I appreciate the few quieter moments – maybe these reflect the spirituality that Townshend was aiming for — when Quinten Kusheba (who portrayed the ten-year-old Tommy on the night I attended) sings a piercingly clear rendition of “See me, hear me” without any of the rock noise. And when the entire cast lines up for a pure, inviting rendition of —

Listening to you I get the music,
Gazing at you I get the heat…
On you I see the glory —

— from them, I do get the story.

(Just to be clear: Pete Townshend does not perform on Broadway; he was just promoting the show with his appearance on TV.)

The Who’s Tommy
Nederlander Theater
Running time: Two hours ten minutes, including one intermission
Tickets: $70-$250
Music and lyrics by Pete Townshend, book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreographed by Lorin Latarro, music supervision and additional arrangements by Ron Melrose, music direction and additional orchestrations by Rick Fox, orchestrations by Steve Margoshes, set design by David Korins, projection design by Peter Nigrini, costume design by Sarafina Bush, lighting design by Amanda Zieve, sound design by Gareth Owen, wig and hair design by Charles LaPointe 
Cast: Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy, Alison Luff as Mrs. Walker, Adam Jacobs as Captain Walker, John Ambrosino as Uncle Ernie, Bobby Conte as Cousin Kevin, and Christina Sajous as The Acid Queen.  Haley Gustafson, Jeremiah Alsop, Ronnie S. Bowman Jr., Mike Cannon, Tyler James Eisenreich, Sheldon Henry, Afra Hines, Aliah James, David Paul Kidder, Tassy Kirbas, Lily Kren, Quinten Kusheba, Reese Levine, Brett Michael Lockley, Nathan Lucrezio, Alexandra Matteo, Mark Mitrano, Reagan Pender, Cecilia Ann Popp, Daniel Quadrino, Olive Ross-Kline, Jenna Nicole Schoen, Dee Tomasetta, and Andrew Tufano.
Photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman