Conceived and directed by Doug Thoms and Kyrst Hogan. Music and lyrics by Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Bob Ezrin. A LiveStage Performance production. At the Rio Theatre on November 5. Continues until November 14

You don’t mess with The Wall. Regarded by many rock fans (or at least by Pink Floyd freaks who don’t give top honours to Dark Side of the Moon) as the greatest album of all time, the 1979 double LP has become a cultural touchstone. Even adaptations its creators have been involved in—such as the 1982 film starring Bob Geldof, and Roger Waters’s all-star live mounting at Potsdamer Platz in 1990—have failed to capture whatever it is that makes the original recording so compelling.

The Wall paints a psychological portrait of Pink, a successful musician whose various traumas—his father’s death in World War II, a childhood dominated by an overprotective mother and tyrannical teachers, a failing marriage, substance abuse—lead him to construct a mental barrier between himself and the rest of the world. The music is often overblown and self-indulgent, but it’s offset by a story that can be downright heartbreaking.

That’s a tough balance to strike, but LiveStage Performance’s version sometimes hits the mark. The sonic bombast is certainly there: the off-stage band that accompanies the actors is loud and powerful. (The story is presented in true rock-opera style, with almost no dialogue.) The music occasionally overtakes the singing, but that seems inevitable when you’re dealing with songs that are arguably best suited to a stadium.

There are a couple of confusing staging choices, though. “Goodbye Blue Sky” is a rather unambiguous song about the London Blitz, and for the film it was illustrated by some appropriately grim animation by Gerald Scarfe. Here, however, dancers dressed as birds encircle Pink, who tries in vain to join them. The message is clear, but it has little to do with the lyrics. Later on, “Comfortably Numb” is sung entirely off-stage by unseen ensemble members. This robs a pivotal scene, depicting Pink’s tranquillizer overdose and subsequent psychotic break, of much of its emotional impact. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the number ends with band members Mark Richardson and Peter Serravalle making their way to the stage for a jaw-dropping duelling-axes version of the song’s epic guitar solo. It doesn’t do much to advance the plot, but from a pure rock-spectacle standpoint, it’s pretty freakin’ awesome.

Equally awesome is director Doug Thoms as the fascist dictator who lives inside Pink’s head. Mark Downey does solid work as Pink, but it’s Thoms who steals the show as his jackbooted alter ego. The gleeful sneer on his face as he leads the semiconscious Pink in a sadistic waltz is chilling, and it sure doesn’t hurt that he can sing just like Waters. After all, you don’t mess with The Wall. Well, not too much, anyway.