Jimmy gets a four-way split to tackle The Who's classic mod coming-of-age story on the stage

Published on Wednesday 20 May 2009 19:06

SUCCESSFUL stage adaptations of much-loved movies are a staple in commercial theatre these days, but it's a brave company who would tackle Quadrophenia.

It's not just the regard in which fans hold the coming-of-age movie, set at the height of the mod era, and the iconic album by The Who which predates it. There are the practical questions of whether its riot scenes, mods-and-rockers clashes and scooter-riding sequences could ever be realised in a theatre.

"It's a ridiculous idea, to be honest," says Jeff Young, the writer of the stage adaptation now beginning its first UK tour. The show, which has the backing of The Who's Pete Townshend, has been nine years in the making and was greeted with standing ovations in its opening run in Plymouth.

Mr Young says they solved the problem of staging Quadrophenia by going back to the original 1973 album that inspired the movie, and reinventing the story as an all-sung "rock opera". "We made the decision not to even look at the film. We thought that if we looked at the film we'd be too influenced to tell that story."

Quadrophenia still tells the story of Jimmy, teenager and dedicated mod (memorably played in the film by a young Phil Daniels) whose priorities in life include scooter maintenance, getting enough "pills" for the Bank Holiday Weekend in Brighton, and winning the heart of the lovely Steph (Leslie Ash in the movie). But the rock opera will portray his world internally as well as externally.

Townshend wrote the lyrics around the concept of Jimmy's four-part personality: the title plays on the words "quadrophonic" and "schizophrenia". Mr Young represents this on stage with four Jimmys, played by different actors: the Romantic, the Lunatic, the Hypocrite and the Tough Guy.

"We wanted to find a device that would show the different facets of his personality and we worked out early on the best way to do that was to use four different actors," he says. "Whenever that side of his personality is at the forefront, that actor takes the lead."

He and director Tom Critchley started working on the show after adapting Townshend's unmade 1970s rock opera Lifehouse for a Radio 3 series on great lost art projects. "He was pleased to see that finally realised, and we were thinking about what else we might do together."

After seven years of "off and on", the moment of truth came when they workshopped an early version in Cardiff in 2007. "That was the test really, that's where Pete said, 'Show me what you can do, and if I think you've got something then we'll go ahead.' We were winging it, we'd hardly any money, but Pete was really into it. He said, 'You've got something, let's do it.'"

One of the people in the audience at the workshop performance was young actor Ryan O'Donnell, 26, now in the show as Jimmy (Romantic). "My mum was one of the second-generation mods of the late 1970s and early 1980s, so I was hugely into the album from an early age, though I wasn't allowed to watch the film till a little bit later.

"It's a dream job getting to sing rock songs of that calibre, it's amazing. It's been tough, but the best and most interesting stuff is borne out the blood, sweat and tears. For me as an actor, it's the closest to being a rock star I'll ever get."

Like all adaptors, the team were faced with the task of maintaining the integrity of a much-loved original, while making it work in a theatre context. The show uses the conventions of theatre to tell the story in a heightened and non-naturalistic way.

"The script was like a cross between an epic poem and a film treatment," says Mr Young. "What it does is try to evoke the time and place, the mood and the atmosphere of 24 hours in the life of a teenage boy. There are moments where it's very dreamlike or nightmare-like – there's a lot of dry ice."

But at the centre of it all is the music, a total of 27 songs including every track on the original album. "Most people have been won over that we're telling a different story, and that we're honouring the music and The Who. People are won over just by the sheer power of fantastic rock music. It's not like a normal night at the theatre – it's very loud."

Ryan O'Donnell says that the story of Quadrophenia is essentially timeless. "It's about a boy finding himself, becoming a man, wanting to belong to something and finding out he doesn't need to as long as he's sure of himself. When The Who and Pete Townshend wrote the album, they were writing about their youth, so it's automatically full of nostalgia."

Mr Young hints this Jimmy might not end his story driving a scooter over a cliff. "It's not exactly a happy ending, but there is a glimmer of hope. One of the messages of Quadrophenia is to say there comes a point where we have to grow up and that these boys and other boys like them will pull through. These kids who get up to all kinds of mischief – drugs, violence, falling out with their family – they're not bad kids, and if you give them a chance and look after them, they can make it."

&149 Quadrophenia is at Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 26-30 May; King's Theatre, Glasgow, 2-6 June; and His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, 18-22 August. quadrophenia.co.uk