Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet Review 2*
Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet based on The Who’s eponymous rock opera arrived at Sadler’s Wells amid much hype
Two full pages of credits attest to the amount of creative effort that went into turning The Who’s celebrated 1973 rock opera studio album Quadrophenia into what’s billed as A Mod Ballet; yet the end result is deeply disappointing.
Not everything misses the mark. Visually, this is an enticing production. Christopher Oram’s sets, vividly complemented by YEASTCULTURE.ORG‘s remarkable video designs, clearly anchor the action in 1960’s London and later Brighton, where the ever-present sea rolls smoothly and later menacingly in the background. Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting design is suitably atmospheric.
And Paul Smith’s stylish costumes are true to the period and to the distinctive dress codes of the two key warring tribes of Mods and Rockers.
The rivalry between the two gangs is the backcloth for working class Jimmy’s search for meaning in his young, hapless life. He becomes a Mod, but that doesn’t really provide the meaning he seeks, and after a series of unsatisfactory encounters he moves from Soho to Brighton, where he may or may not eventually find what he is looking for.
However, unlike in the original album, in Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet, the tale is told not through The Who’s incisive, vigorous, epoch-making rock songs, but through Rachel Fuller’s misguided orchestration, mostly a series of full orchestra grandiloquent waves that swell and crash and rise only to crash again, with no sense of progression, characterisation or indeed narrative.
Combine that with Sadler’s Wells’s over amplified sound system and you have something often approaching aural torture.
It comes, therefore, as a relief when instantly recognisable instrumental versions of two key songs – My Generation and I Can’t Explain – sound, Pete Townshend’s distinctive guitar, John Entwistle’s bass lines and Keith Moon’s drums a balm to the soul.
Paul Roberts’s choreography, better in crowd scenes, such as the infamous Brighton Battle of the Mods and Rockers, than in characterisation, fails to sustain narrative progress; it’s to the credit of the cast, directed by Rob Ashford, that they manage to make something out of very little.
Paris Fitzpatrick, better known to Sadler’s Wells audiences as a member of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, grabs the sketchy role of Jimmy by the horns and almost makes us care. Stuart Neal and Kate Tydman are good as the working class parents defeated by life and, in his case, tormented by memories of the battlefields of World War II – his flashback possibly the most powerful scene of the entire work, with fighter planes whizzing against a smokey, cloudy sky strafing the terrified soldiers below.
And Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball adds a not inconsiderable dose of stardust with his cameo role as the swaggering rock star, in an ironic balletic turn.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet. Photo: Johan Persson)
Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet is at Sadler’s Wells until 13 July 2025. Info and tickets here
Then at the Lowry, Salford, 15-19 July 2025. Tickets here