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Love. Sex. Homicide. This must be opera!

Or, at least, last generation's rock 'n' roll version of it, when you throw in drugs.

"The Who's 'Tommy'" is banging the rafters and literally rising up into them at the Clarence Brown Theatre through May 3. It opened Friday.

Pete Townshend's song cycle about the traumatization and ultimate redemption of Tommy, after a decade of being deaf, mute and blind, hits every lick under Casey Sams' direction and in Christopher Pickart's inventively industrial set.

As the older Tommy, Jonathan Visser dominates the show, especially when he's flying, flipping and walking on air.

But it's 8-year-old Matthew Michaud's extraordinary portrayal of the youngest Tommy's glum, stoic descent into a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil syndrome that forms the psychic scrim through which this whole piece must be viewed.

When time passes to Jonah Zahn's young Tommy, not even Tracey Copeland Halter's voluptuous and seductively tempting Acid Queen can get through Tommy's emotional sarcophagus. But does she try!

Despite rock's reputation for social disregard, wrapped up in this thundering, ripping musical is a story of the emotional dissolution of a family trying to cope with a handicapped child.

It's only when someone sets young Tommy in front of a pinball machine, with which he can construct his own universe, that he can put into place the destructiveness of witnessing his father kill another man. It's only then that he can deal with the nasty, invasive hands (who knows what else) of his boozed Uncle Ernie, effectively played by Tom Cervone.

His pinball wizardry fulfills his silent pleas of "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me." It also helps him to finally see the light.

Along for the ride, whatever turn it takes, is Quinn Q. Cason's Cousin Kevin.

Mace Archer, as Captain Walker, and Katy Wolfe Zahn, as Mrs. Walker, struggle through the years of the captain going off to war and her finding a new life when he doesn't return at its end, all of which puts this glimpse of life in play.

At least in this bygone era of pop culture's history, the only gun on display is war-worn and fires a single shot.

Like the young man who sat next to me and had never heard of The Who, Biggie Smalls' generation could learn a lesson or two.

There's ear plugs offered at the door and the band hits it at 7:30.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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