Review: QUADROPHENIA A MOD BALLET, Sadler’s Wells

Photo credit: Johan Persson

When The Who sang that iconic line “I hope I die before I get old” in their ‘My Generation’ released in 1965, they could not possibly have imagined that some sixty years later, their music would still be attracting new audiences or being evolved into a more classical form. When we last saw the surviving band members, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend play at Wembley in 2019, it was with a fifty-seven-piece orchestra. Now, Townshend’s wife has rescored his best album, the Mod Rock Opera Quadrophenia as a ballet and after a short UK tour, it arrives at the historic Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London for a short run.

Quadrophenia was an iconic soundtrack that captured the clash of cultures of the Mods and the Rockers that grabbed the headlines in the mid 1960s. Its sound had an emotional raw power, with sweeping guitar chords and brilliant lyrics that swept you along on a wave, reflecting the torments that haunted a doped-up Jimmy, a mod number played by Paris Fitzpatrick.

The adaption to a ballet by Rachel Fuller has stripped it of some of that visceral emotional impact and of course, loses the lyrics. The orchestrations give it a rich, more lyrical musical tone and Paul Roberts’ choreography provides some elegant storytelling, explaining the four facets of young Jimmy’s personality that create his turmoil more clearly: The Tough Guy, The Lunatic, The Romantic and the Hypocrite (each played by a synchronised dancer). They add a back story (which seems to mirror Tommy’s father in The Who’s other brilliant Rock Opera, Tommy) with his father suffering from a post-war traumatic stress. Only when they play ‘My Generation’ with the wonderful Matthew Ball as The Godfather, resplendent in a Union Jack blazer, and later in ‘Can’t Explain’ when Jimmy tries to seduce the Mod Girl (Serena McCall) do we briefly capture the sound that we loved as Who fans.

It is a tribute to Townshend’s composition that Fuller can rearrange it as a score for ballet and we can admire the dance technique, but we feel detached emotionally in a way that listening to the original soundtrack in a darkened room as a teenager we would have not thought possible. The choreography is attractive and elegant but lacks the awesome impact of the West Side Story Jets and Sharks conflict to which the programme alludes. It fails to deliver the innovation and creativity of Mathew Bourne’s brilliant reimagining of Edward Scissorhands. Many of the routines seem overly long, extending the running time to over two hours and you wish there had been some judicious cuts. The wonderful ‘5:15’ about a drug fuelled train journey from London to Brighton is trapped in an overfilled railway carriage until Jimmy soars above them but even then, suspended illusion flying wires are clearly visible destroying the moment.

The settings with projected imagery of street, café, clubs and the sea are slick and interesting, framing the bare stage well and Paul Smith’s costumes capture the era. The fantasy sequences are well conceived with Jimmy’s dreamy sexual liaison with the Face (Dan Barnes) and The Mod Girl, and his father (Stuart Neal) reliving his War nightmares providing interesting variation but are also rather long. The song that Keith Moon made his own, ‘Bell Boy’ is a little disappointing as it is danced around a luggage trolley.

We had just seen Just for One Day at a matinee and their ‘My Generation’ rearrangement gave The Who’s emblematic hit a new life for the millennial generation. Perhaps Fuller/Roberts’s production will connect the Sadler’s Wells faithful to this era defining album with its fresh feel and sound but as a Who Fan, I was personally left wanting something more and yearned to hear “Can you see the real me, me, me” over again.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

Quadrophenia plays at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre until 13 July, with further info here.