Video: Find Out Who's Who in THE WHO'S TOMMY on Broadway

It just feels like we're all just celebrating what music is and what, like, turning to your family at the end of the day is

And it's just, you're just filled with, like, such an appreciation for live theater at the end of it

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. The Who's Tommy is returning to Broadway following a record-breaking, sold-out run in Chicago, and we're here at Sardis to catch up with the company

We did it because, you know, everybody's... wandering around staring into a mirror, albeit a black one

Everybody's trying to escape a hostile universe. So this show has a pertinence and an edge that I don't think it had 30 years ago

And many of the topics are in conversation now. Bullying, abuse, trauma

There are things we talk about as well as I think, you know

the Tommy being the political, cultural leader he becomes at the end

end of the second act. It's all on the table. So it's less about changing the story, although it is a

very modern and contemporary staging of this, very different than the one 30 years ago. It's really

more of the story's the same. It's really more about the landscape around us changing. Let's talk

about Tommy for 2024 what you wanted to bring to a brand new Tommy. I wanted to bring a sense of

awe and a sense of serious high-velocity dancing, but I also wanted to bring motherhood and fatherhood

and this really poignant story about a family that is fractured and heals

I think if you don know the music your mind will be blown It is so good It is the OG rock opera Like this is what kicked off everything right And he was 23 years old and he made this show up before there were iPhones

And yet, I think 2024 audiences are going to see this and really get the metaphor of what we're doing to ourselves

looking in these iPhones, what we're doing to ourselves blindly following leaders

what a movement can distort to, all of these things. They're so oppression and they're so now

Well, you're about to make your Broadway debut as Tommy in Tommy

Is it surreal for you? It's insanely surreal. It's kind of one of those things where everyone's like, how are you feeling

How are you feeling? Like, is this insane? And it's like, I just have to keep breathing through it

I'm trying to just be present in each moment. It's the only way to like process it, I guess

What do you remember about that first performance of a live audience in Chicago with you as Tommy

Well, we didn't know necessarily. really, as with all shows, you don't know how people are going to react

And it was insane. At least in Chicago, and I assume and hope it'll be the same in New York

This show almost felt like church in a way. Just in the fact that the audience doesn't really have time to clap or make any noise for the show

We're just, we move. We barrel through. But at the end, we all do this like benediction, this like full tilt song to the audience

And it really feels like a concert. And people stand up and they're like doing the old, you know, like they're at a concert

It just feels like we're all just celebrating what music is and what like turning to your family at the end of the day is and

It just you just filled with like such an appreciation for for live theater at the end of it It like a homecoming coming back to Broadway It been I don know since 2018 on the road but a couple of years before that at the New Amsterdam

And so I'm back on 41st Street, right across the stage door to Aladdin

and I go to work now at Tommy, and it's incredible. I'm so excited to get the show up and running to share with New York audiences

Working with Des McEnough and Pete Townsend. came to see you guys

Having Pete come to the show in Chicago was incredible. He kind of gave his check

mark in Chicago, and then we did a little promo in Miami, and he was there, and

got to jam with him on stage. So he's, and he's very sweet. He's got that British humor

And, you know, he did this opera. He wrote this magnificent rock opera when he was

22, 23, I think. You know, prodigy, and then bringing this. It's amazing

It's amazing that he wrote this at such a young age, and it was like a musical, but he wasn't thinking that way

when he wrote it was a concept album in 69, and then suddenly, and then now we're bringing it to the stage

You know, they did it 30 years ago, but it's incredible to think that he had that sort of picture in his mind

as he was writing this, like how it would be on stage, and we're doing it

Pete Townsend is Salt of the Earth, so awesome. I also shout out to his wife, Rachel

who is really dope. And working with Des has been incredible. I would work with him on everything I possibly could

I feel like he is such an academic and such a historian, which is amazing when it comes to this show And I just I feel like I need to like have a notebook with all of his stories and anecdotes And he just he a teacher He is a true teacher The whole thing has been very special on a personal level because I found out an hour

and a half before we started our first rehearsal in Chicago that I was pregnant. So I did the show up until I was five months pregnant

And now I had my baby seven weeks ago and here we are on Broadway. So he's our little baby Tommy, well, hopefully not with all the baggage and the trauma

But he is our little infant Tommy. You know, this is a very amazing opportunity to just come back, you know, and do something so special

This show is extraordinary, and it has an extraordinary cast. The team has been so flexible in allowing us to bring ourselves into this material, and I can't wait for New York City to see it

The company of this show is a group of human beings that I'm just so lucky to be among, and I mean that in every way

I don't, yes, up to the performing, but more. to the family that we found offstage and in our personal lives

And I just feel so lucky to be able to go in every day and be performing alongside colleagues

but also people I call friends. I played Tommy in community theater in Happenbeck, California when I was 15

So to now work with Des in particular and just feel like you're a very small part of the history

of this thing that means so much to people is a very moving feeling

And certainly when we were doing this in Chicago, we all had hopes that this would come here

But I think we were all taken aback by the speed and the trajectory and the ferocity that Steve Gabriel and I were put him in our producers got us here

So we just feel so lucky. And it's really stunned. And we really just want to service the history of this piece