Rock band The Who are riding the crest of a wave again at the moment, fresh from headline slots at Glastonbury and British Summer Time at Hyde Park, so what better time to bring back their rock opera Tommy?

The story of the deaf, dumb and blind kid who plays a mean pinball is coming to Greenwich Theatre from July 29 to August 23, the first time it’s been on the London stage in a quarter of a century, 40 years after the original film was released and 50 since the band formed.

Director Michael Strassen, who saw and enjoyed that show in the West End 25 years ago, promised something dramatically different.

He said: “I wanted to get back to the rawness of it.

“When it was originally done, it was very raw and then it maybe got maybe a little bit West Endy.

“I want to rip it back to that electric guitar, bedroom feel.”

An important part of that change is not the material itself but how we, as an audience, view it.

Modern society’s attitudes to disability should make for a different reaction from a play whose central character, Tommy, suffers from locked-in syndrome following childhood trauma.


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Michael, who worked as an actor for 25 years before turning to directing, said: “I’m very, very excited to be doing it because I truly believe the public’s head is in a slightly different place now to watch something that is basically about trauma and disability.”

He added: “It doesn’t make it a different play, it just makes it resonate differently.

“My big mantra is context.

“I always say to my cast ‘OK, here’s a seven-year-old girl. She’s going to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in a party dress for you’ and everyone says ahh. Then I say to them ‘here’s a seven-year-old girl, she’s going to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – her father has just died in a car crash and she hasn’t been told yet’.

“You can see how the context changes it. It’s not going to be different, we are.”

All of which is not to say fans of The Who won’t love the show.

Michael said: “If you’re a Who fan, you’re absolutely going to love this because The Who were progressive.

“It’s actually very surprising that people like Queen and Pink Floyd didn’t write something for the stage.

“They almost did with concept albums but The Who did and it’s fantastic and The Who fans are going to love it.

“For twenty-somethings, this is very hard-hitting, it has got sex, it has got violence, it’s got great music and it has got self-examination and really quite nasty things in it.

“We’re talking to the video game generation. If I had £10million I would probably set Tommy in a video game. It moves like that, it doesn’t hang around.”


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In the new production, Michael has enlisted choreographer Mark Smith of the company Deaf Men Dancing to incorporate sign language.

He said: “We tried some in the auditions and it was so moving I could barely watch it.

“Mark turned to me and said ‘what do you think?’ I said it was absolutely beautiful and he said ‘it’s a little bit of what it’s like to be in my world’ because he lives in a world without sound.

“Tommy lives in a world without anything.”

The Who’s Tommy is at Greenwich Theatre from July 29 to August 23. Go to Greenwichtheatre.org.uk