Quadrophenia – A Mod Ballet
Sadlers Wells, London
★★★★★

CRIKEY, this is good. My ageing Mod bones, NOT soaking up nostalgia, but something current and urgent through the vitality of Pete Townshend’s music, and performances that bring a whole new iteration to this piece.  

Quadrophenia, born of 1960s working-class culture, means four aspects of the psyche. In protagonist Jimmy’s case these are: the Tough Guy, the Lunatic, the Romantic and the Hypocrite — all danced as separate characters. As Shakespeare had it in A Midsummer Night’s dream: “The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact,” and there is a coherence in these divergencies of personality, if you can find it, and keep it together.  

But this is Modsummer Night’s dreaming, spanning a week in teenage Jimmy’s life, whose quest for identity and a tribe make him leave his depressed parents in London for a spell in Brighton. The ballet opens and ends on a rock in the sea; a sea-soaked set designed by Christopher Oram and brought to illusory life by video designer YeastCulture.org.

The rock we cling to while the elements rage around you and inside you; it is Homeric, with universal theme of lost youth, or more particularly the lost boys, with shades of JM Barrie. As Pete Townshend writes in the programme: “My composition and story is from 1973. That was when I looked back to try to find a way to help The Who to also look back ten years to where our story as rock stars began. In 1973 we were lost, and Quadrophenia helped us find our way.”

Jimmy on the rock, is followed by his quadrophonic characters from the sea. Then he visits a psychiatrist (Marx would have diagnosed alienation), gets a chit and goes home to tell his parents. But they don’t wanna know — a brilliant scene where Mother and Father Kate Tydman and Stuart Neal literally shift the scenery; the emotional props, if you like.

In a search for meaning in their own lives and relationship they dance together. The link with WWII and its collective traumatic inheritance is there — and a later scene, where his father evokes his war experience in his vest, braces and old trousers is very emotional. We assume this is D-Day, as he watches his friends being killed, the last of them dying in his embrace.  

The filmic backdrop here is stunning, but the music stops — we just hear just the gasps and grunts of the dancers and, as the emotional valves are already open, many audience members were in tears. This is the soil from which Jimmy and his generation grew.  

Some role models would help him, and he takes off to a Soho club to see his idol the Godfather. Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation is an exhilarating dance cameo from Royal ballet principal dancer Matthew Ball; all that strutting, pirouetting, leaping is just perfect.

But the universe turns away from perfection, as does Jimmy when Godfather refuses an autograph. His other idol is Ace Face, a Brighton Mod gang leader, a brilliant Dan Baines. Yet he too has feet of clay, despite how fast they move. The Mod Girl — Serena McCall — the siren who every boy wants to be with (where does Eros go?) is wonderful. The cast jackknife, jerk, strut and sometimes float their way through their routines, an inexhaustible Paris Fitzpatrick as Jimmy in nearly all of them. What a future he has as one of our principal dancers.

The Mod v Rocker fight scenes are breathtaking ensemble work, echoing the Montagues and Capulets, the Jets and Sharks, all rivalries that acted as a backdrop for stories of emotional catharsis. Choreographer Paul Roberts and Director Rob Ashford have done a fine job.

Rachel Fuller’s full orchestral score of The Who’s Quadrophenia is mighty — with shades of Aaron Copeland, I thought. We can almost hear the voice of Roger Daltry riding the chords and the waves. Oram’s sets borrow from fine artists, Edward Hopper and Peter Blake in the Brighton train and Soho interiors. Original costumes are by renowned British fashion designer Paul Smith. And if anyone is wondering how such tightly fitting clothes can be danced in, gussets were tailored into the suits apparently.

We end with Jimmy’s dark night of the soul on that Brighton rock, to the song Love Reign O’er Me. Does he have enough sense of self to carry on? It’s a cliffhanger, literally, as we are so invested by the end. 

The whole thing is a thrilling collaboration of artists, dancers, musicians and of course Pete Townshend, who should have the last word: “We all need to know where we come from/ We all need to know where we’re going.”

This ballet will help you with both those questions.

Runs until July 13, then at the Lowry, Salford, July 15-19. Box office: sadlerswells.com.