Word: mcanuff
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What drove Des McAnuff into allowing such a stunning, moving and magnificently consuming musical to be dissected into a mere fraction of what it once...
...McAnuff, the director of The Who's Tommy, spoke those words in 1992, just before his Broadway production of the rock opera won five Tony awards. At the time, he was speaking about fans of The Who, who just wanted a concert without all the flashy theatrical interpretation. But today, his words come back to haunt...
...heart and soul five years ago. Perhaps I couldn't stand it because all the qualities that won Tommy five Tony’s in the first place--including scenery, lighting and Wayne Cilento's brilliant choreography--are all gone now. Perhaps I am one of the people McAnuff was referring to, one who feels like she owns the show and can't stand to have it changed...
...perhaps this new version of Tommy is oversimplified, fraught with terrible acting and less-than-polished voices, and does not deserve to have either McAnuff or Pete Townshend's good names attached to anything near...
...victims. But in a day when intricate plotting has become a lost art, one of Cousin Bette's great pleasures is its capacity to plausibly surprise. It's not its only pleasure. Lange's work is wonderfully controlled, her hidden passions expressed with glancing delicacy. And stage director Des McAnuff, making a smashing film debut, subtly poises the endless, deadly ironies of this tale against the efficiently suggested feverishness of Paris just prior to the revolution of 1848. Rarely has a period film spoken with such energy and immediacy to our impatient modernism...