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Restaging Lifehouse (was: What's up with Roger?)



> How do you think it ought to be staged?  Very spare and evocative again?
> Mostly lighting and a few background slides and some mist with a couple of
> stools onstage?

I think The Who missed the boat on the original format not doing it as a
live show.  Imagine 1971 with a stage surrounded with a lights with a hint
of electronica (lasers then?).  Then The Who come out and pretend that we're
at the Lifehouse in the future.  They play a Who concert centered around the
new material with interspaced smidgens of dialogue to hint at what "The
Grid" is doing outside the concert hall.  It all ends in a cataclysm with
"Won't Get Fooled Again" as the outside forces try to break into The
Lifehouse; that is, the concert hall (special effects? smokebombs in the
concert hall?).  The electronica builds to a climax then the lights go out.
Spot on Pete (or someone) at a piano as "Song Is Over" begins.  Song ends,
Who leave, return for normal encore.

As for Lifehouse '99, I don't think the problem would be solved by staging
it which would only carry the dialogue and bald-faced symbolism (I'm you as
a child, I'm your childhood fantasy playmate) on stage where the theatrical
critics would gleefully take potshots at it.  No, a rewrite is what's called
for.  Make us think Rayboy is a real child and leave the idea of him being
Ray as a boy as a possible interpretation. Make the Caretaker a real person
who just may be.  Put a time limit in to build some suspense (Ray knows
something is going to happen to Mary at the millennium).

-Brian in Atlanta
 The Who This Month!
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