I don't know how I missed this up until now. While perusing the Sundays this morning my attention was drawn to a quite tacky advert for
Quadrophenia. Not another
dvd release I thought to myself but on closer inspection no, a stage adaptation . . . a fucking stage adaptation!
Growing up during the mod revival, having mates who to this day are still mods at heart, and with the invention of the VCR, I must have seen
Quadrophenia at least once a month for about 6 years. So even as a non mod (I was always a bit too scruffy, too much of a punk and couldn't get my head around the modernist tag when effectively they were following the fashions from 2 decades previously) I have a soft spot for Jimmy, Chalky, Ferdy and the others.
Just how the hell do they intend to translate this cult film of my youth to stage? Take the opening scene for example Jimmy travelling along the streets of the big smoke at night on his LI. Just how are they going to convey the buzz that he is on in a theatre? Simple, they aren't. I know that stage adaptations happen all the time and are mostly successful but I just can't for the life of me see how this is going to work. What about the music are they just going to play the
cd over the PA, or are they going to get some second rate Who tribute band to perform the soundtrack?
The stage production is sponsored by
Lambretta for
fuck's sake!
If anybody is seriously thinking of going to see this, do yourself a favour log on to Amazon,
Ebay or similar buy the double
cd, the original not the soundtrack and the DVD and watch
Quadrophenia the way
Townshend intended.
What will be next Easy Rider the musical?
The Who -
I've Had Enough
