Hints and tips:
...There are witty touches to Des McAnuff’s pin-sharp direction (departing band members zip off on a conveyor belt) and some clever match-ups of song to story....
...Like the hit Four Seasons musical Jersey Boys, which faces it at Broadway and 52nd Street, JCS has been staged by Des McAnuff, who is the artistic director of the Canadian Stratford Shakespeare Festival....
...Although Peter Gelb, the presumably budget-conscious super-impresario, might have revived it this season, he turned instead to a staging by Des McAnuff imported from, and shared with, English National Opera...
...As you might expect from the director of Jersey Boys, the Broadway and West End hit musical, Des McAnuff arranges his principals expertly but asks no questions of the opera....
...What Des [McAnuff] has done is something much more under the microscope, in the detail of the acting, the design and story-telling....
...Songbirds could probably sing with more consistent freshness than some of the warblers in Des McAnuff’s new Broadway staging....
...For that, credit the director, Des McAnuff....
...But Des McAnuff stages Jersey Boys with terrific adroitness. Its scene changes are as smooth as those of The History Boys, saddled with largely extraneous video, are clunky....
International Edition