New York Metropolis Heart, New York, NY.
November 16, 2025.
Quadrophenia, a rock ballet adaptation of The Who’s seminal 1979 movie, is a vibrant, if generally uneven, exploration of adolescent turmoil. Written by Pete Townshend, with music path by Rachel Fuller and in partnership with Sadler’s Wells (UK), the story charts the youthful angst of Jimmy (Paris Fitzpatrick), a Mod navigating the complicated journey of the teenage years within the British seaside city of Brighton within the Nineteen Sixties.
The work facilities on a love story: Jimmy is in love with Mod Woman (Serena McCall) who appears candy and desires of a future in style. She is courting Ace Face (the inimitable Dan Bairnes interprets the position that Sting performed within the film with perfection). Ace Face is a pure chief of the Mods in his colourful fits and sharp, exact actions. A bunch dance at a membership dissolve right into a duet through which Jimmy dances with Mod Woman, solely to be introduced again to actuality when Ace Face whisks her away on the finish of the dance.
At house, Jimmy can’t get a lot satisfaction both. His working-class mother and father, trapped in a rut, are emotionally distant — his factory-worker father (Adam Garcia) and pill-popping mom (Kate Tydman) are glued to the TV. In a dream sequence — extra like a nightmare — Jimmy’s father is catapulted again in time. As he joins the march along with his doomed WWII platoon, the scene options highly effective acrobatics because the troopers fall one after the other. When Jimmy’s buddy is “shot,” he rushes in, catching his falling physique in a loving duet of weight shifts earlier than gently laying him to relaxation. Garcia is a compelling mover who channels his character’s ache whereas, because the Mom, Tydman nails the theatricality wanted to precise her character’s mixture of hope and disappointment. A quick duet between them hints at a love they as soon as shared, solely to finish abruptly when the daddy walks away after a sultry dip.
Movie actor Ansel Elgort (Child Driver, West Facet Story) has a cameo because the Godfather. Showing shirtless beneath a British flag-print jacket, his ripped torso glistens within the highlight. Air-guitaring to “My Technology” (a music launched in 1965), Elgort flings himself round, struts throughout the stage and exhibits off in a job that’s clearly a stand in for Pete Townshend in his heyday. The Who have been infamous for smashing their devices after a present and Elgort simulates this wild catharsis on the finish of this scene. Whereas there’s driving and dissonant guitar music, which is completely different than the remainder of the present’s orchestrated music, I’m positive I’m not the one who missed the music’s uncooked and stuttering lyrics — “individuals attempt to put us down, simply because we g-g-get round… talkin’ ‘bout my era.”
Director Rob Ashford’s mild contact retains the motion shifting in between dance sections. The set (Christopher Oram) and video (Yeastculture) are excellent and Obie worthy. Yeastculture’s movies create a completely immersive expertise using aerial photographs and pictures that tilt and whirl within the area. Projections vary from a sliver of a picture to seize smaller areas (a tunnel) to an aerial view of waves crashing on the shore projected in opposition to the whole again wall, showing wild and unwieldy. Oram’s moveable set options panels which are assembled like puzzle items to create a wide selection of settings from a diner to a subway (a playful and hilarious scene through which dancers seize the frenzy hour crush splendidly). Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting compliments the video and set design to deepen the mise en scène of every part.
Paul Smith’s costumes of colourful and sharp strains for the Mod fits, with rising punk rock parts, made every dancer stand out. Choreographer Paul Roberts (who handed away in September 2025) had a present for creating complicated group scenes. A notable second within the present is the combat scene between the Mods and the Rockers: as an alternative of simulating violence, the dancers rev up for an assault solely to freeze on contact. The impression gathers in our thoughts as we’re left to think about the remaining.
Jimmy’s unrequited love, disillusionment and drug use culminates in a hallucinatory scene with Medicine (Amaris Gillies in a shiny blue costume), with capsules projected in area, raining down on Jimmy who takes flight in a harness. As he flies excessive by way of area, he imagines Mod Woman coming for him. Quickly he crashes from the medicine and awakens by the water’s edge. As he wanders the streets of Brighton, he stumbles upon Ace Face working as a bell hop in a giant, posh resort. He can’t consider what he sees. Ace has been diminished in his subservient position.
Jimmy’s confusion, the rivalry between the Mods and the Rockers (there may have been extra of this) and his crush on Mod Woman are all effectively explored. Ultimately, Jimmy perches on the cliff’s edge with 4 associates, the enormous waves projected in opposition to the backdrop once more. The choreography will increase the strain because the ensemble gently catch Jimmy as he’s thrown backwards and forwards between them in a dance of opposites: pressure and launch, fall and restoration, battement and contraction. This push-pull, a mirrored image of his psychological state, leaves him teetering on the fringe of the cliff because the lights go down.
The supporting forged — 11 extraordinary movers — assist spherical out the narratives. The unbridled vitality of the Who’s music is embodied in Roberts’ choreography, and is the guts and soul of the present, however the orchestral model of The Who’s music mutes the facility that lies on the coronary heart of the songs. Even one music — my alternative would have been “My Technology” — would have supplied the punch wanted to ship this rock ballet to nice heights.
By Nicole Colbert of Dance Informa.
