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One Singular Sensation: The Michael Bennett Story
A biography of the originator of "A Chorus Line" details his successes and failures and his death
1 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
35 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Kelly
133 books1,605 followersKevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control."
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 10, 2021
Very poorly written and sloppily organized book that deifies Michael Bennett while virtually everyone the author talks to says the Broadway choreographer was a horrible person. It's all pretty confusing--to have someone called a "genius" repeatedly by people who hate him, and not enough specifics given to support either viewpoint.
The structure of the book doesn't help. The writer doesn't know how to tell the story in a way that makes it easy to read. He jumps back and forth, mixes timelines, adds a few paragraphs here and there out of place. As a theater critic he assumes the reader knows things that are not explained, then Kelly adds his own very subjective opinions about all sorts of things and people. That detracts from the overall theme and left me wondering what was true.
I know there are other books about Bennett and A Chorus Line out there, and I now regret choosing to read this first. It's put together like a bad Wikipedia entry that glosses over some major aspects of the choreographer's life while overwriting about others. I never felt like it was a complete, cohesive work--and in the end felt like Bennett was treated with too much respect. He may be a legend, but for all the wrong reasons.
The man was a very bad person, a control freak who had zero self-control when it came to his personal life or working with people. He had just a little bit of talent the produced one big hit that made him rich off the backs of others that he stole from, and he certainly didn't do anything sensational by himself. His drug use, sexual promiscuity, lying, abuse, intellectual theft, and violence negate anything positive he did in the world. None of that balance is reflected in this poorly written book that seems to want to push the propaganda that Bennett was brilliant while hurting everyone he ever dealt with.
The structure of the book doesn't help. The writer doesn't know how to tell the story in a way that makes it easy to read. He jumps back and forth, mixes timelines, adds a few paragraphs here and there out of place. As a theater critic he assumes the reader knows things that are not explained, then Kelly adds his own very subjective opinions about all sorts of things and people. That detracts from the overall theme and left me wondering what was true.
I know there are other books about Bennett and A Chorus Line out there, and I now regret choosing to read this first. It's put together like a bad Wikipedia entry that glosses over some major aspects of the choreographer's life while overwriting about others. I never felt like it was a complete, cohesive work--and in the end felt like Bennett was treated with too much respect. He may be a legend, but for all the wrong reasons.
The man was a very bad person, a control freak who had zero self-control when it came to his personal life or working with people. He had just a little bit of talent the produced one big hit that made him rich off the backs of others that he stole from, and he certainly didn't do anything sensational by himself. His drug use, sexual promiscuity, lying, abuse, intellectual theft, and violence negate anything positive he did in the world. None of that balance is reflected in this poorly written book that seems to want to push the propaganda that Bennett was brilliant while hurting everyone he ever dealt with.
Displaying 1 of 1 review