Flicker House Productions presents a new production of The Who's Tommy at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood. The Who's Tommy features music and lyrics by Pete Townshend and book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff. The cast will include original Broadway cast member Alice Ripley.

The production is directed by Brian Purcell, who directed "Chess," the special event at the Ford Amphitheatre last summer. With musical director Dan Redfeld and choreographer Denise Leitner, Purcell has come up with a radical new theatrical treatment for Tommy, one of the seminal works of the rock era. The concept is to create a new and visceral aural environment, designed especially for the Ricardo Montalbán theatre.

As the movie was to the seventies, and the Broadway staging was to the nineties, Purcell and his collaborators have a new concept for the piece for this decade. Purcell said, "We envision a 'Tommy' that takes place inside of Tommy's own head and to track his experience of his story. This gives us an entirely new canvas to present this work, which has meant so much to the three generations that have come up since the album's original release."

The production will introduce high definition 3-D Sound, presented by EXP3D, a new audio system that does for sound what 3-D and its lenses does for motion pictures. The sound will inhabit a fully dimensional space, inside and outside each guest's body.

Each guest will have Bose headphones to wear, the equivalent of movie 3-D glasses for this production. Unlike conventional headphone experience, where the soundscape is a straight line between the wearer's ears, EXP3D sound gives the listener a fully dimensional room of sound with height, width, and depth.

Tommy director Brian Purcell said, "EXP3D is the best sound you'll ever see. It allows us to do Tommy in an entirely new way - and for the first time the audience will truly be inside Tommy's head as he experiences the events of the play.

The sound is designed by James Johnson, who created the EXP3D sound delivery system for this production. Johnson will take the live sound, mix it for the 3-D soundscape, and then deliver it to each audience member through the headphones, which work in conjunction with sound delivered through speakers.

Purcell said, "While most of the sound will be heard in the headphones, we will also employ theatrical sound you really can feel, just like in state-of-the-art movie theatres, that can only be delivered through conventional speakers. The speakers will also carry all of the sound of the show, so that audience members who are headphone adverse have a complete experience." Headphone distribution is provided by MagicFire Inc.

The Who's Tommy is one of the most phenomenal works of the rock era. Originally released as a two-record set in 1969, and composed by Pete Townshend, with songs contributed by Who bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon, it was the work that started a new genre - the rock opera. Since its first release, it has been continuously performed live, including the tremendously successful Broadway staging in 1993.

Tommy was inspired by and written to convey the experience of how Townsend felt after being taught by Meher Baba, a Persian man born in India who became a spiritual master and teacher and anti-drug advocate, and other writings and expressing the enlightenment he believes he received. It is a metaphorical story of different states of consciousness.  Purcell said "I want to return the work to this base - and to strip down this work and return it back to the sensibility and the message of the original album from 1969 - raising awareness of the spirit."

Other cast members include Aleks Pevec as Tommy; Jenna Leigh Green, most recently Nessarose in the Los Angeles production of "Wicked"; Tom Schmid as Captain Walker; and Hank Adams as Uncle Ernie.

Brian Purcell directed "Chess," the special event at the Ford Amphitheatre last summer; it was among the most popular and highest grossing attractions in the Ford's history. As an actor, he appeared in the Broadway National Tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar," and in "Footloose" as Willard Hewitt, "Ragtime" as Younger Brother and "Evita" as Che.