THE MOST IMPRESSIVE thing about "Tommy" by The Who is The How of Memphis State University Theater's staging of the rock opera, and the most widespread response of audiences experiencing it is likely to be — The What?

Exactly what "Tommy" is, I doubt that anyone can say. It is too vague and ambiguous for precise definitions. On the literal level, it is the story of a boy made traumatically deaf, dumb and blind by seeing his father kill his mother's lover and by his parents' frantic insistence that he didn't see it. As a teenager, he undergoes a miraculous cure, becomes a pinball wizard, declares himself a sensation, and attracts a cult of followers who reject him when he institutes rigid discipline and dogma.

The story is told operatically through a sequence of two dozen songs, or airs, originally presented by The Who on records and in concert.

Now, obviously, we cannot be expected to take pinball wizardry seriously. We must have a symbol here; pinball must represent something else. But what? Well, for pinball wizard, we could read "rock star." For many, rock is a religion. Elvis, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones have been its prophets, have been worshipped and rejected. On the purely rock level, "Tommy" could have a wry, satirical flavor.

Doing His Own Thing

PINBALL WIZARDRY could symbolize self-realization — doing one's own thing. On this level, Tommy, alienated in his deaf-dumb-blindness, might represent all those members of the younger generation who are unable to communicate with their parents, or to conform to society's standards. Unable to do anything that pleases them, he acquires a skill which wins him not only the approval, but the adulation, of his peers — every drop-out's dream. But soon his thing is no longer their thing — nobody is as square as yesterday's rebel — and so they reject him. Generations grow up, but the generation gap remains.

Director Keith Kennedy, who devised the action for the Memphis State production of "Tommy," saw something more timeless and archetypal in the terse, elliptic lyrics. He saw Tommy as a contemporary counterpart of Christ or Dionysus, or Oedipus Rex. Thus he has given us not rock in terms of religion, but religion in terms of rock.

That Peter Townshend, who wrote most of the rock opera, had something of the sort in mind is no secret. Three previous stagings of "Tommy" — two as ballets and one, by the Seattle Opera Association, in theatrical terms — have all taken this classical approach to the work. But where they followed the messianic tradition beyond rejection to regeneration (the San Francisco dance version even had a symbolic crucifixion and resurrection), the gospel according to Kennedy has the Tommyites turning, not back to him at the end, but to each other. Listening to each other, they "get the music;" gazing at each other, they "get the heat," following each other, they "climb the mountain," they "get excitement" at EACH OTHER'S feet. No more rigid, exclusive pinballism — no more Tommy infallibility or blind orthodoxy — for them.

An Inorganic Ending

ALTHOUGH I AGREE with Kennedy that there is no indication of regeneration for Tommy in the libretto and that there is nothing in it to deny that his followers might, after rejecting him, embrace each other (and the audience), I was nevertheless unprepared and unconvinced when it happened. It is not, for me, an organic ending; it doesn't grow out of anything that has gone before. It is "Hair" without the roots. Although the opening night audience rose to its feet when the performers held out their arms engagingly and passed, singing, up the aisles, I didn't feel the possibility of apocalypse as I did at "Hair." I was not moved.

But though I was not moved, I was fascinated and impressed throughout the performance by one of the most virtuosic and precise demonstrations of stagecraft I have ever seen. Forgetting The Who and The What, here, certainly, is How!

The whole theater becomes a great pinball machine of winking, blinking neon, paint, silhouettes, slide and film projections, driving sound, and rolling yet perfectly controlled and disciplined motion.

The Real Stars

SCOTT THORNTON as Tommy, Suzi Shendelman (Substituting last night for Connie Dean) as his mother, Don McNatt as his father, Beverly Baxter as Sally Simpson, Larry Riley as the Sally Simpson Narrator, and many others in the large cast galvanically perform the material at hand. But the real stars of this staging of “Tommy” are Kennedy, set designer Terry Twyman, musical director Beverly Kennedy, choreographer Betsy Anthony, lighting designer Frank Roland, sound director Lynn West, cinematographer Craig Leake, technical director Roger Tiemann, costume designer Charley Howard, and neon designer Ron Pekar.

They have given "Tommy" a consummate stylization, an almost computerized contemporaneity, and a relentless drive which perfectly complement and visualize the aural quality of the score. (The score is spotty — “Tommy Can You Hear Me" and "Listening to You …" are very good indeed — but all of it is tremendously well played by the seven-piece band.)

Given the variable Who, the ambiguous What, and the brilliant How of "Tommy," one might do a whole treatise on the Why. But I have space left only for the When (at 8:30 nightly except Sunday through Nov. 13) and Where (in the Main Theater of the MSU Fine Arts Center on Central).