The Who’s musical Tommy will return to Broadway 26 years after it ended a two-year run there.
“Our new production of Tommy will be a reinvention aimed directly at today,” said Des McAnuff, who directed the original production, in a statement. The musical is scheduled to debut in 2021.
“Tommy combines myth and spectacle in a way that truly soars. The key question with any musical is ‘Does the story sing?’ and this one most certainly does.”
McAnuff grew up in Toronto and is the former artistic director of Ontario’s Stratford Festival, which hosted a revival of Tommy in 2013. A Canadian production of the musical, starring Ottawa’s Tyler Ross, premiered at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre in 1995.
Tommy is based on The Who’s 1969 rock opera about a “deaf, dumb and blind” pinball wizard. The landmark album also spawned a movie starring Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Tina Turner and Eric Clapton.
“Tommy is the antihero ground zero. He is the boy who not only rejects adulthood like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, but existence itself. He becomes lost in the universe as he stares endlessly and obsessively into the mirror at his own image,” McAnuff said.
“This gives our story a powerful resonance today as it seems like the whole world is staring into the black mirror. The story of Tommy exists all too comfortably in the 21st century. In fact, time may finally have caught up to Tommy Walker.”