High’s manager, the greasy Rastus Knight, gossip columnist Ruth Streeting puts High at the center of a series of scandals, reigniting his career in the process.

The story is related by brief dramatic segments interspersed with songs that comment, often very tangentially, on the action. On stage Monday, three actors played out the dramatic bits with minimal staging, as Townshend and his band pumped out the tunes behind them.

While the aging-rock-star angle obviously has more than a few parallels to the life of the 48-year-old Townshend, the self-absorption of “Psycho-Derelict" isn't nearly as annoying as the fact that it’s simply a weak, dumb story. Especially coming from the man who set the standard for mixing rock and drama with “Tommy,” the piece is piffle.

The package gained a bit from live performance, mainly because of the spirited playing of Townshend and his band. The album’s stronger numbers, especially the rousing single “English Boy,” were given extra spit and fire, although a few electric moments couldn’t make up for the tedium of the hour-plus wallow.

Townshend himself seemed to recognize the limitations of his new work, murmuring before the performance began that “It’s not meant to be the greatest thing since rock ’n’ roll” and pleading with the audience to “roll with it.”

Fortunately, “PsychoDerelict” accounted for a minority of Townshend’s three-hour performance. The mini-opera wasn’t rolled out until the singer-guitarist had riled up the crowd with a skanking version of the English Beat’s “Save It for Later” and smoking run-through of “Rough Boys,” the highlight of Townshend’s brilliant 1980 “Empty Glass” album.

After tossing off a few Who songs, including a wonderfully moody reading of “Drowned,” it was time for the new material, which received a polite but not-too enthusiastic response for the crowd.

Townshend quickly had them on their feet, however, with a wildly free-form version of The Who’s “Magic Bus.” Closing with the Who anthem “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Townshend was every bit the rock hero as he led the band to a thundering climax. Watching the middle-aged maestro race around the stage and bash his Telecaster with his patented windmill style, it was easy to believe that rock can grant a certain level of immortality.

That impression was merely amplified when Townshend encored with a solo acoustic version of The Who’s “My Generation,” a paean to youth older than many people in the audience. Townshend’s stripped-down treatment turned the powerhouse rocker into a gesture of middle-aged solidarity and showed that great rock ’n’ roll never gets old.