Who's 'Tommy' to rock at Balch

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are coming to the Balch Arena Theater tonight. The concert version of The Who's rock opera Tommy is the last of Pen, Paint and Pretzels' (3P's) fall minor productions, and is being performed in conjunction with the student musical theater group, Torn Ticket II (TTT).

In this rare collaboration, the cast consists of students who are involved in different activities and who would otherwise probably not have worked together.

"We have people in a cappella groups, people who are in every Torn Ticket show, people who are in 3P's and [Drama] Department shows, and people who play sports," cast member Nicole Frattaroli said.

Travis Marshall, one of the three members of the a cappella group The Beelzebubs in the cast, said it has been "really exciting to work with so many different people."

The cast's diversity, however, has posed a logistical nightmare to the production staff in trying to build some type of a rehearsal schedule.

To get around this problem, rehearsals have been limited to a few songs and a few people at a time. Yet, there can be some advantages to having lots of little rehearsals and having only a limited number of group rehearsals as the show approaches. "To put together a show that has 20 songs in it, only being able to have four or five group rehearsals before show time is scary," Paransky said. "But that's also what makes the creative process so interesting."

The cast has enjoyed working with Paransky as a director. "Tali has done a great job organizing everything in a very short amount of time, breaking up such a huge undertaking into manageable bites for the cast, band and crew," Marshall said.

Even though rehearsals have been broken up, this will make the final product much more spontaneous. "Somehow when [the cast] comes together we sound as though we've all been practicing together this whole time," Frattaroli said. "And because we haven't been practicing together, we're all excited to see what everyone else in the cast has been working on, so the show is going to be very fresh and exciting."

"The story is outrageously convoluted, the characters bizarre, and not everything always makes sense," Paransky said. "So, why not take out that and focus on the best part of the show _ the music. We want to put on a rock concert."

Since this version of Tommy will focus more on the music than the story, the pit will be central to the production. In fact, the band will be completely visible and on the back of the stage.

"Our basic goal is to rock as much as possible," pit drummer Graham Griffin said. "The challenge of trying to rock is that musicals generally do not rock. But this musical, it rocks."

"It was tough to learn the Broadway version of a lot of the songs because I knew The Who's versions so well," guitar player Brian Warner said. "There's a different sound between the two but in doing a concert version we were able to find a happy medium."



Tommy is playing tonight only in the Balch Arena Theatre at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. Tickets are free.