Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet Festival Theatre Edinburgh 10th June 2025 Review
Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh this week (Tue 10 – Sat 14 June), and even if you are not familiar with the music from the now iconic album, have never seen the 1979 film, or know little about the 1960s Mod movement, this show is worth taking time out to see. Having said this though, this work is tightly linked to the original music and the film, and there is a lot of detail here. Acquainting yourself with at least a general synopsis of Quadrophenia before going to this show will add many layers of this story for you.
Pete Townshend was never going to let his creation come to a new stage and a new audience without the production being something very special and have some of the best creatives involved in it, and this Quadrophenia with Sadler’s Wells has simply created an on-stage work of art.
Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet is, from the opening scene where we meet Jimmy standing on a cliff edge, a choreographic masterpiece, and choreographer Paul Roberts has achieved here two very difficult tasks. The first one is making Jimmy and everyone around him individual characters with their own emotions and story to tell. The second is making the fight scenes realistic. Here that restless energy of youth, that feeling of adults saying nothing that you want to hear, and creating your own identity through your music and your fashion is perfectly captured on stage.
Like the film, we enter at the end of this story and get to know the story of what lead Jimmy to this moment in time. We get to know the world of the original Mods and for some, like Jimmy, their amphetamine fuelled lifestyle which allowed them to dance all night in their favourite clubs. This is the world of “faces” around town and the “numbers” who filled the dance-floors. This is the world of a youth sub-culture and the many strutting peacocks who inhabited it.
That Mod love of fashion, that attention to how you looked, is lovingly recreated here with costume design by Paul Smith / Natalie Pryce and costume stylist Hannah Teare. If you are of a certain age and were lucky enough to be there first time around, you might just recognise yourself, an old boyfriend or girlfriend, or even that outfit that you wore at the time in this show.
At first glance, turning Quadrophenia into a ballet might seem an odd move to make, but dance, like the music that accompanied it, was an integral part of the Mod movement. The two are inseparable and that weekend escape from weekday work and life was an escape into another world for so many people. If that word, ballet, somehow creates certain images in your mind, fear not, as choreographically, Quadrophenia is more movement in motion to tell a story, and very dramatic in its telling of a narrative.
A new orchestral score by Rachel Fuller and Martin Batchelar merges with instantly recognisable Mod anthems with, when needed for the story line, often subtle references to The Who, but be clear, this is definitely not a “juke-box” musical, is something very different. Combined with direction from Rob Ashford and a first class team of creatives, Quadrophenia has captured in fine detail the world of the original Mods and Rockers of the 1960s.
In the leading role of Jimmy, Paris Fitzpatrick was outstanding all evening, both technically as a dancer, but also dramatically and emotionally as a story teller, and he has to be in line for some major awards for his performance here. Playing the role of Mod Girl, Jimmy’s main interest in life (well maybe after the music), is Serena McCall, and again another fine performance here and one that works so well with Jimmy’s character and balances that rivalry between him and the “Ace Face” around town. Visually “The Face” does get some of the most striking outfits and looks of the whole show. There is also a very good sub-story going on here about Jimmy’s parents.
Quadrophenia is a big show by any standards and a highly technical one too. The creative set design (Christopher Oram) here is augmented with cutting edge video (YEASTCULTURE.ORG) and sound design (David McEwan) that add so many layers of interest to this production.
At one level, this is an old story, a Romeo and Juliet for Mod times, but it also owes much choreographically to the look and feel of the feuding gangs of West Side Story. Every generation forms its own sub-culture, but no one did it in quite the style of the Mods, and Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet captures all of this on-stage.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Pete Townshend was never going to let his creation come to a new stage and a new audience without the production being something very special and have some of the best creatives involved in it, and this Quadrophenia with Sadler’s Wells has simply created an on-stage work of art.
Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet is, from the opening scene where we meet Jimmy standing on a cliff edge, a choreographic masterpiece, and choreographer Paul Roberts has achieved here two very difficult tasks. The first one is making Jimmy and everyone around him individual characters with their own emotions and story to tell. The second is making the fight scenes realistic. Here that restless energy of youth, that feeling of adults saying nothing that you want to hear, and creating your own identity through your music and your fashion is perfectly captured on stage.
Like the film, we enter at the end of this story and get to know the story of what lead Jimmy to this moment in time. We get to know the world of the original Mods and for some, like Jimmy, their amphetamine fuelled lifestyle which allowed them to dance all night in their favourite clubs. This is the world of “faces” around town and the “numbers” who filled the dance-floors. This is the world of a youth sub-culture and the many strutting peacocks who inhabited it.
That Mod love of fashion, that attention to how you looked, is lovingly recreated here with costume design by Paul Smith / Natalie Pryce and costume stylist Hannah Teare. If you are of a certain age and were lucky enough to be there first time around, you might just recognise yourself, an old boyfriend or girlfriend, or even that outfit that you wore at the time in this show.
At first glance, turning Quadrophenia into a ballet might seem an odd move to make, but dance, like the music that accompanied it, was an integral part of the Mod movement. The two are inseparable and that weekend escape from weekday work and life was an escape into another world for so many people. If that word, ballet, somehow creates certain images in your mind, fear not, as choreographically, Quadrophenia is more movement in motion to tell a story, and very dramatic in its telling of a narrative.
A new orchestral score by Rachel Fuller and Martin Batchelar merges with instantly recognisable Mod anthems with, when needed for the story line, often subtle references to The Who, but be clear, this is definitely not a “juke-box” musical, is something very different. Combined with direction from Rob Ashford and a first class team of creatives, Quadrophenia has captured in fine detail the world of the original Mods and Rockers of the 1960s.
In the leading role of Jimmy, Paris Fitzpatrick was outstanding all evening, both technically as a dancer, but also dramatically and emotionally as a story teller, and he has to be in line for some major awards for his performance here. Playing the role of Mod Girl, Jimmy’s main interest in life (well maybe after the music), is Serena McCall, and again another fine performance here and one that works so well with Jimmy’s character and balances that rivalry between him and the “Ace Face” around town. Visually “The Face” does get some of the most striking outfits and looks of the whole show. There is also a very good sub-story going on here about Jimmy’s parents.
Quadrophenia is a big show by any standards and a highly technical one too. The creative set design (Christopher Oram) here is augmented with cutting edge video (YEASTCULTURE.ORG) and sound design (David McEwan) that add so many layers of interest to this production.
At one level, this is an old story, a Romeo and Juliet for Mod times, but it also owes much choreographically to the look and feel of the feuding gangs of West Side Story. Every generation forms its own sub-culture, but no one did it in quite the style of the Mods, and Quadrophenia A Mod Ballet captures all of this on-stage.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com