- LONDON: Not everyone can walk from an opera house where he is directing Gounod's "Faust" half a mile to the theater where his musical "Jersey Boys," about the Four Seasons pop group, is in the third year of its London run.
In fact, the only person who fits this description is Des McAnuff, a one-man whirligig of energy and inspiration with not a finger but a fist in every pie from musicals to plays to film and, for a second time, the rarefied air of the opera house.
"I think that I do have a very confused career and if you're kind you'd call it eclectic and if you're unkind you might call it anarchic," the 58-year-old McAnuff told Reuters at the Coliseum, home of the English National Opera.
McAnuff — who also is artistic director of Canada's not-for-profit Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario — has been spending a lot of time with ENO pulling together the new production of Gounod's 19th-century romantic masterpiece.
The production, about Faust's pact with the devil (aka Mephistopheles) which allows the aging and suicidal doctor to re-live his youth and seduce the innocent (but jewel-bedazzled) Marguerite, opens on Sept 18th.