Yesterday we went to see the rock opera, "Tommy" at Stratford. We left at the intermission. But that isn't saying much because we also left "Hair" at the intermission when we saw it at The Grand Theatre a little over a year ago.
We had been warned that Tommy was loud [and great thanks to several FB friends who warned us]. So, just in case, we took earplugs. I quite smugly said to Ms Eclectic that I'd put my earplugs in as the house lights were dimming, but the buggers started the loudness before dimming the house lights. :-( It was WAAYYY too loud.
For me the problem with both "Tommy" and "Hair" was that the band/orchestra was too loud --- so loud, in fact, that I couldn't hear the singers very well. Is it just me, or are the sound mixers and balancers right out to lunch on this? Why on earth would they consistently make the bands too loud to hear the singers?
I took out the earplugs twice during the first half of the show: once when they sang "touch me, feel me", and then again when they sang "Pinball Wizard". The volume was deafening. I don't know how people could stand it, and I don't know why more people didn't leave when we did (or maybe they did; how would I know?). If I hadn't had earplugs, I'd have left after the first minute and probably been screaming "Turn down the volume" on my way out.
"Pinball Wizard" was a great party/club/dance song back when it first came out. Everyone loved yelling/singing "He played a mean pinball," but until I read about the plot of Tommy, I had no idea what the story was behind the song. To be honest, back then I couldn't understand the rest of the words in the song and for that reason didn't much care for it.
We got cut-price tickets for the show and at those prices we were glad we saw the first half of the show; we certainly would NOT have felt that way if we had paid full price for our tickets. It was "interesting"... "Very interesting".
The review in the Trono Globe & Mail of a May performance was a pretty accurate description of the show we saw. The singer who played Tommy's father was quite good. But the staging, while intriguing, was so fast-paced with all the screens and colours, that it amounted to sensory overload.
I think that will be our last visit to a rock opera. I just don't trust them not to kill us with the sound.