March 29, 2019
It
probably shouldn’t be surprising that director Des McAnuff’s
ultimate signature should be pop singer/pop group bios. Though he would
privately bemoan the aspect of Big River that
had him chaperoning an authorship that really had no instinctive notion of what
a musical was, or how one might be built, he followed that up with Tommy; so clearly that kind of
assignment speaks to his reflex. And of course, it’s not much of a leap to go
from there to musicals about The Four Seasons (Jersey Boys), dame Donna (Summer)
and now, with Ain’t Too Proud, the origins of The
Temptations.
By now
it’s a tried-and-true template: The narrative is delivered in the first person
by some manifestation of the central figure or figures, and we zip through a
highlights biography with selective, representative, one hopes mostly true,
anecdotes, and it’s all crafted around a catalog of their most famous songs.
Against a polished, high tech scenic design, it looks great, it tells slick, it
moves like a gazelle and it sings like your memories.
And it
defies meaningful criticism. If I may invent a category, this is an Is What It Is show. It sets out to do a
thing for its target audience, it does that
thing for its target audience, and nothing much else matters.
Me? I liked it well enough.
You?
You’ve learned what you’d be in for. You already know …
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