LONDON — For his first musical since "The Who's Tommy" blazed its way to Broadway, composer Pete Townshend is aiming high even as he sets his budgets low.

"The Iron Man," the songwriter's new rock opera at the Young Vic Theater through Feb. 12, inevitably draws comparisons to "Tommy." The composer, however, says he is reminded of Stephen Sondheim's 1979 masterwork, "Sweeney Todd," which also drew on the theme of man surviving the machine age.

"It has those pretensions," said Townshend, 48. "I've always been very comfortable with the idea of pretentiousness; it seems to me that's what art most aggressively is about."

Townshend was talking about the show shortly before it opened Nov. 25 to mixed-to-negative reviews.

Based on the 1968 children's poem by England's poet laureate Ted Hughes, "The Iron Man" pits an earnest troupe of urban dwellers against the machine-chewing Iron Man and the voracious Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon.

A sequel, "The Iron Woman," was published in Britain in September.