Wichita’s Forum Theatre takes on ‘The Who’s Tommy’ as newest musical

To get inspiration to play the title role in “The Who’s Tommy” for Forum Theatre, Ethan Crank turned to his grandparents.

They had seen the groundbreaking rock opera during a performance in Kansas City in the late 1960s, and Crank dug into their music.

“I’ve heard ‘Pinball Wizard’ a million times and I’m familiar with The Who’s discography,” Crank said.

“Tommy” opens this weekend and continues through Oct. 6.

The Who’s rock opera about a “deaf, dumb and blind kid” first debuted in 1969 and evolved into a 1975 film and a Broadway show that debuted in 1993, winning five Tony Awards. A starker version of the musical was staged on Broadway earlier this year, receiving a Tony nomination for best revival.

Although there are differences in the album, movie and stage musical, its main plot is about young Tommy witnessing his father murdering his mother’s boyfriend, turning him catatonic with no skills but the ability to play pinball.

Crank said he worked to make the character believable.

“The blankness of the stare is a really interesting part of the character,” he said. “You sort of feel what Tommy’s feeling. He wants to just jump out of his skin and express himself so much and you feel that throughout the show, but it has to be contained. It creates a really fantastic ending to the show, when he does break free of his catatonia.”

“Tommy” was completely new ground for Nora Graham, who plays Tommy’s mother.

“I’m very much a Gen-Z product of my generation, but what really drew me to this show was the story of it,” Graham said. “It is kind of fantastical and surreal in a lot of ways and intentionally so, but I think it’s really a human story too. It’s interesting how juxtaposed those pieces are – this really surreal, dynamic rock ‘n’ roll rock opera with this really human, really visceral story that’s going on through the whole thing. And Tommy is taking us along on this whole journey.”

Forum artistic director Kathryn Page Hauptman staged “Tommy” at the Orpheum Theatre in the early 2000s.

“It was hugely popular,” she said. “I think we sold out every performance for two or three weeks.”

Although Hauptman said she doesn’t like to stage the same show twice, her interest in the show piqued again after hearing about the revival.

“I thought wow, it’s a really good time to do this show again. It’s such great rock ‘n’ roll music, it’s a classic story,” she said. “It’s time.”

Longtime Wichita performer Steve Hitchcock is directing, and said he wanted to go back to the source material for “Tommy.”

“I very much wanted to leave it in the era it was written, because the music is so reminiscent of that era, it felt like of silly to put it anywhere else,” he said.

Hitchcock went back to the archives to find Rolling Stone interviews from Who guitarist Pete Townshend, who wrote “Tommy,” and to look at the differences in the various versions.

“It’s the same story but the interpretations are vastly different,” he said. “It was a kick to dive in and see what the inspiration was and how that’s mutated over time.”

The Forum’s “Tommy,” he said, has an industrial look, including scaffolding as part of the set.

Hitchcock said a challenge in directing “Tommy” is to be entertaining despite some bleak subject matter.

“There’s some really heavy elements to this show. We’re dealing with the fact of a child who experiences some traumatic moments, and his way to cope is to go catatonic,” he said. “There are elements that are hard and difficult and things we don’t always like to talk about.”

Hitchcock, who was the associate director for Music Theatre Wichita’s “Frozen” this summer as well as general manager and associate artistic director of Mosley Street Melodrama, said he approached Hauptman looking for more directing opportunities.

“Directing lets me tell a story more fully for something more creative and different,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed doing more of that lately.”

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’ BY FORUM THEATRE

When: Through Oct. 6; performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays

Where: Wilke Center, First United Methodist Church, 330 N. Broadway

Tickets: $34-$44, with discounts for students and military, from forumtheatre.org or 316-618-0444