The world premiere of Pete Townshend's Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet took place at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth on Wednesday night, 28th May. The show will run in that theatre until 1 June, before moving on to other cities in the UK through July.
This new orchestral dance production is the latest rendition of The Who's masterpiece rock opera Quadrophenia, which was released in 1973. The album's loose storyline of a disillusioned young 60's mod named Jimmy was originally told in a lovely essay that Pete wrote for the liner notes, accompanied by a series of black and white photos by Ethan Russell. Pete recorded ambient sounds of the sea and other background noises to help depict scenes in the story, and wove them into incredibly rich and complex musical themes. The visual qualities of the album and emotional lyrics and music are what lends this masterpiece to be recreated in various dramatic art forms.
So far Quadrophenia has been released as a movie (Franc Roddam's 1979 film starring Phil Daniels, Sting, and Leslie Ash), followed twenty years later by a full blown musical stage production, which also premiered at Plymouth's Theatre Royal before touring the UK in 2009. Both of these projects were fantastic, but the story for each strayed a bit from the original albums concept.
In 2012, Pete performed electric guitar on classical versions of the songs Quadrophenia and Love Reign O’er Me with Jeff Beck and the BBC Concert Orchestra at the “London on Film” event. This orchestral production was later expanded to become Classic Quadrophenia, which premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2015 and toured the US in 2017, starring Alfie Boe as Jimmy, Pete Townshend as the Godfather, Phil Daniels as Jimmy’s dad, and Billy Idol as Ace Face.
The orchestrations for these classical productions were arranged by Pete's wife Rachel Fuller and Martin Batchelar, who did a brilliant job of translating the electric music from the rock album into a full blown orchestra. They went on to create the stunning orchestral score for the new ballet.
Pete said in a press statement, "In 2016 Rachel Fuller agreed to create an orchestral score of the album. When I first heard a demo of this version, without vocals, my first thought was that it would make a powerfully rhythmic and emotionally engaging ballet. Workshopped in 2023, that thought became a reality and I knew we had something that would resonate with new audiences, and also bring joy, as it had in its other iterations for decades. The themes of young people growing up in difficult times are still so relevant. It’s going to be poignant, tender and poetic and epic."
Unlike Classic Quadrophenia that featured a full orchestra and singers, this production is backed by instrumental music recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and doesn't contain any singing. It also includes a couple of instrumental versions of early Who songs, I Can't Explain and My Generation.
The story in the ballet is told through stage sets and video visuals, beautiful period costumes by legendary 60's Mod clothes designer Paul Smith, dance choreography by Paul Roberts, and direction by Rob Ashford, all working with the fantastic cast of dancers to evoke the original storyline from the album's essay and photographs.
The leading roles are performed by Paris Fitzpatrick as Jimmy, Dan Baines as Ace Face, and Serena McCall as the Mod Girl. Jimmy's character is accompanied by dancers representing four facets of his personality, the TOUGH GUY, the LUNATIC, the ROMANTIC, and the HYPOCRITE. There are also roles for Jimmy's mother and father.
This is a very special presentation of Quadrophenia, so you don't want to miss it this summer!
Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet will tour around the UK before it officially opens at Sadler's Wells in London on 24 June.
Here are the tour dates: Plymouth Theatre Royal (28 May – 1 June 2025), Edinburgh Festival Theatre (10 – 14 June 2025), Southampton Mayflower Theatre (18 – 21 June 2025), London Sadler’s Wells Theatre (24 June – 13 July 2025), Salford The Lowry (15 – 19 July 2025).
To purchase tickets, please visit ModBallet.com.
Many thanks to Matthew North for contributing his review of the opening night show!
Photo credit: Johan Persson
To promote Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet, Pete Townshend has been doing a lot of press interviews.
Here are a few quotes from Pete about the ballet:
Sky News: "My wife Rachel did the orchestration for me, and as soon as I heard it, I said to her it would make a fabulous ballet. Heavy percussive sequences, there are explosive moments. There are also romantic moments. It's perfect for ballet."
NME: “I heard her score and I remember saying to her, ‘I can just see dancers dancing. It had tones of Prokofiev about it. There was a poetic sensibility to what I was seeing. I was just shocked and surprised. I thought, ‘Hey, there’s new shadow here, there are new shades, there’s new optimism’. I was never happy with the film. I felt the film was lazy. It was not based on my story and it didn’t include much of my music. So I thought here was an opportunity to do something that honours the music, but also possibly takes it into a new era, a new place.”
BBC Radio Cornwall: "The interesting thing about the movie was that Frank Roddam, who directed it, in a sense didn't want to base it on the album. He wanted some of the music to feature but just as incidental. He was fixed on the story. And the story is a simple little, maybe a 120 word essay on the inside sleeve of the album. And that's the story. There's not much to it. And when we've done this ballet version, my wife Rachel said I really want to make sure that we don't go up our own arses with this and start to kind of turn it into something that it isn't. The way to make sure is to base it on the story that is on the inside of the album. So in a sense, what we are seeing in the ballet production is we're seeing a lot of stock footage that has been shot in Brighton, under the pier, and the sea shots that you see is the sea in Brighton."
ITV News at 10: "Ballet is the only medium really, poetic medium where there are no words at all. I've always felt that Quadrophenia was maybe encumbered by the fact that it needed words. I think it will be the first ever ballet for a lot of aging mods, who show up on their scooters with their scruffy old parkas and not really know what's going on."
The Times: "Everyone talked about how Jimmy was this working-class boy who f***s up, his parents are alcoholics, blah blah blah … What nobody noticed was the spiritual message of Quadrophenia. So I’ll be honest and say that when it came to the first workshop of the ballet, I wasn’t expecting much. Then I saw it: no rock’n’roll bullshit, no drummer whiting out halfway through the show, the original message of the piece embodied by the movement of these young dancers. It meant Quadrophenia had another life.”
The Guardian: “I was struck by the fact that I was being drawn back to my mid-20s by these boys, who had a physical way of expressing the missing lyrics. It felt like it was drawn from deep inside these young dancers. And I found it incredibly moving. It’s being brought into the modern day by the dancers. There are a couple of times when I’ve had tears in my eyes. And that’s not because I’m listening to my own music, it’s because it feels like it belongs to this new gang.”
Program liner notes: "Led by our choreographer Paul Roberts, the first time I saw a team of today's young dancers workshopping the story of Jimmy from Quadrophenia, feeling the roles, finding an identification with all the characters I grew up with in the sixties, I was certain that we had a new MOMENT. Another door opened into the entire story of the youth of the early '60's, and a new artistic language came into play for me, this time with the youth of the "Information Era". This project is rooted in feelings, emotions, frustrations, the sense of loss and loneliness, the joy of being young and learning how to fit in. Dance is perfect to express all this."
Review by Matthew North
Plymouth Theatre Royal 28th May 2025
It really does not feel like it was 16 years ago that the Theatre Royal premiered the Quadrophenia Musical. Since then we have seen a Classical version of the piece and this has given way to this new interpretation, this time as a Ballet.
When I arrived there were a few Vespas outside the theatre and it was busy as I got in. Tonight is pretty much sold out and I would say there was a broad mix of regular theatre people as well as Who fans in the audience.
The show started pretty prompt at 7:30. There was no stage announcements, just the lights going down and the sound of the sea blasts over the speakers along with a massive video screen.
It starts with Jimmy and some of his friends on ‘The Rock’ in the sea with an opening performance, you can see part of this routine in some of the promotional videos that have been used to promote the Show.
The two halves are basically set as part one being about Mod’s in London and then part two is events in Brighton.
We go through the first half with scenes in London, including 4 doors with different mod bullseye images to represent the 4 faces of the band, a nice touch, and there was the family home, a cafe, a factory. The Ace Face is quite prominent and the dancer from where I was sat looked uncannily like Mr. Sting.
There are also in the piece 2 actual Who tracks, My Generation in a dance set in the Marquee club, and I Cant Explain set in a disco. According to the programme these are instrumental outtakes. My Generation has a guitar part added to replace the vocal melody. These scenes are really great. Though part of me kind of wished they had just used the normal tracks with vocals. But it was good to break up the classical elements with some rock and roll.
There was a scene in the family home where they are watching Steptoe and Son on the TV. This is the only bit of dialogue as such in the whole show. There was then a section involving Jimmy’s Dad and World War 2, something new to the story. Great visuals and effects with this.
Not long after they had a technical issue where everything stopped and the curtain came down. The house lights came up a few minutes later, and people thought it was an intermission. It did feel like this may be the case, however someone made an announcement that it wasn't and that it would continue. The break happened just after a segue, so It really didn’t spoil the enjoyment of the performance because what followed was truly epic.
At the end of part one there was a stunning new version of Love, Reign o'er Me in a slightly Jazz style with great interplay between Pete and trumpet player Yazz Ahmed. This was for me, with the dance that went with it, the highlight of the show.
In the interval the production staff were filming members of the audience to get their take on the performance for promo, I felt quite honoured to be interviewed. Afterwards someone from a radio station interviewed me, not sure which one but I’d like to find out!
The second half of the show goes to Brighton, and we have the scenes that we expect. The Mods and Rockers fight was very well done, and wasn’t such a big feature as it was for the musical and more so the film.
Into Act two and there is a 3 in a bed romp for Had enough! We get another great set for 5:15 and then ‘out of my brain’ a dream like sequence with 2 different lots of projections, this looked stunning. For Drowned, Jimmy and girl do a duet dance wonderful stuff. Then it's the Dr. Jimmy / Bell boy sequence, such amazing dancing in this timed to the music.
Things start to get more dark, and the piece ends with Love Reign O’er Me. It is a perfect emotional end to the show. I am NOT going to say how it ends.
The choreography throughout was absolutely stunning,
My overall view was that if you have an original copy of the Quadrophenia LP and you look through the booklet of the album, the production mostly sticks to the narrative of the images in the book, and thus for me this is a closer interpretation to the album than the film or the musical was. Enjoyable as they both were.
The sets and the technical aspects of the show are brilliant. I felt the sound and music was a touch too loud for me.
There was some merchandise available at the show at reasonable prices. Programme was £6, Tote Bag £10 and the obligatory T-Shirt was £25.
This is a performance well worth seeing.
Photo credit: Matthew North
Photo credit: Matthew North
