As a fan of The Who, this wretched ‘mod ballet' makes me want to weep

Telegraph

26-06-2025

'Where's Matthew Bourne when you need him most?' This sad thought kept ricocheting around my mind on Tuesday evening as this slick, well-meaning, wretchedly anodyne dance-theatre version of The Who's marvellous 1973 album – which became an even more marvellous film in 1979 – played out. The mod-ish moves, the hormone-driven mayhem, the fabled mid-Sixties setting – oh, to think what fun he and his designer Lez Brotherston could have had with it all.
For all its grandiosity, that 1973 'rock opera' is packed full of cracking music, and it was put to perfect use in Franc Roddam's work-of-art movie, a confection that positively bubbled over with teenage swagger, insecurity and take-no-prisoners tribalism – as well as sex, drugs and (yep) rock'n'roll. Do watch it if you can; there's nothing quite like it.
The fundamental problem with this new 'mod ballet', though, is that all the sharp or exciting edges of the album's narrative – so cleverly exploited and amped up on the big screen – have been either completely filed off or at least sanded down to an unthreatening shine. The album's story is essentially there: Jimmy (the lithe Paris Fitzpatrick), a young mod living in 1965 London, wars with his parents, fights rockers in Brighton, tries to keep up with his pals and win the heart of Mod Girl (Leslie Ash in the film, and here by Serena McCall), all the while looking up to the ultra-cool, Sting-like Ace Face (athletic Dan Baines). But excitement is absent and the fundamental elements don't add up.
The entire thing is swamped by almost invariably syrupy, bombastic orchestral arrangements of The Who album by Martin Batchelar and Rachel Fuller (aka Mrs Townshend) that are both typical of the problem and a fatal part of it. One terrific bar scene aside, director Rob Ashford – who has done high-octane work in the past with megastars from Diana Ross to Prince – seldom seems to get fully under the skin of the mod-ish dance moves of the era, and tends to resort to a one-size-fits all contemporary vocabulary that very rarely surprises. Sometimes, it even stumbles into unintentional comedy, especially with the strange, soaring lifts in what is supposed to be a brutal seaside clash. (The same, sad to say, is true of the will-this-never-end climax.) Even the usually exhilarating Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball, cameoing as Jimmy's rock-star hero, blamelessly comes across as bland.
As for Christoper Oram's sets and uber-designer Paul Smith's costumes, these, too, seem to fall oddly in and out of the era. Some of the outfits, and one or two of the less video-dominated sets, fit the bill crisply, but there's an overwhelming sense of lip service being paid to the 1965 setting, without ever making you feel as if you're there.
So much, then, for the rock'n'roll – what about the sex and drugs? Jimmy's frustration comes across loud and clear, and the masturbation scene is present and correct, but without packing any sort of illicit, desperate or tragic punch. As for the uppers, there is, to be fair, a character actually called 'Drugs' (played by the aptly seductive Amaris Gilles), decked out in azure to, I'm assuming, reflect that Jimmy's amphetamine of choice is the so-called 'blue'. At one point, he even takes to the air like The Snowman as a high hits him. But again, there is no real menace; no thrill of the forbidden or sense of a downward spiral.
The conceptual oddness of Drugs is continued in the quartet of characters who intermittently accompany Jimmy, depending on the situation – one, I gather, for each of The Who's four members. There's the Tough Guy (Roger Daltrey), the Lunatic (Keith Moon), the Romantic (Townshend) and the Hypocrite (purely, I must stress, by process of elimination, John Entwistle). But these amount to nothing more than dramaturgical affectation, watering down Jimmy's sense of gnawing isolation and leaving you scratching your head because it is never clear which one is which; you just wish they'd scarper.
What is so particularly sad about this show – endorsed by Townshend, conceived with love, and with all performers doing their level best – is the disappointment that lies in wait not for people who already know the music and the film, but for those who don't. The uninitiated could well come away from this wondering what the big fuss is, not only about Quadrophenia but about one of the most skin-prickling rock bands of all time – and it makes me want to weep.