Long before Hamilton transferred from the Public Theater to a triumphant Broadway run, there was A Chorus Line. Also developed at the Public Theater, Michael Bennett was given space for a year to work on his celebration of Broadway dancers. This musical went on to break the record as the longest running show in Broadway history. I saw A Chorus Line three times during that original run. For this entry in my Retrospective Series, I viewed two tapings preserved in the New York Public Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape Collection: the off-Broadway Public Theater taping on July 12, 1975 and the then record-breaking 3389th Broadway performance on September 29, 1983.
Writing this blog has been illuminating as a chronicle of my personal experiences, an opportunity to communicate with theater companies and as a chance to voice an opinion which hopefully adds to the theatrical discourse. Before the internet, certainly in the time of A Chorus Line, the print and television critics had much more influence than they perhaps do today. I decided to first examine what was said about this classic, possibly perfect musical.
On May 22, 1975 in the New York Times, Clive Barnes started his review of the Off-Broadway production by stating, “The conservative word for A Chorus Line might be tremendous, or perhaps terrific.” An excellent review except for the score: “Mr. Hamlisch is not such a good composer as he was in the movie The Sting when he was being helped out by Scott Joplin, but he can pass.” By the time the show opened on Broadway in October, Mr. Barnes had a change of heart: “The music by Marvin Hamlisch (which I have now got to know from the recording) is far more vital to the proceedings that I first thought, and far better. It could easily become a classic.”
After having viewed these two tapings, the score is definitely a classic. A band of dancers at an audition to see who gets hired. The critics at the time were mixed on the “quasi-group therapy” of James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante’s book. I found the show’s storyline to be a rich mining of the dancer’s soul. What drives their passion to excel? Why commit to this hard life of rejections?
Sheila’s nearing the end of her career and says, “I’m going to be thirty real soon and I’m real glad,” dripping with sarcasm. What motivated her? In the exceptional “At the Ballet” she tells us “I wanted to be a prima ballerina.” In the same song, Bebe confronts her appearance, “different is nice but it sure isn’t pretty.” Maggie deals with her parent’s divorce: “raise your arms and someone’s always there.” There’s an abundance of humor in this show (“locked in the bathroom with Peyton Place” and “to commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant”). But the serious moments and vocalized introspection from these dancers takes an audition and turns the proceedings into a celebration of tenacity and talent.
In the mid-1970’s, Broadway was starting to slump. The character Paul has a heart wrenching monologue about how he transformed from a homosexual kid dismissed from a Catholic school to eventually becoming a legit dancer. He pointedly notes, “I don’t wanna hear about how Broadway’s dying, ’cause I just got here.” A Chorus Line was a major shot in the arm prior to the impending AIDS crisis and its devastating impact on the theater over the next two decades. A Chorus Line was Hamilton big. West Side Story big. Oklahoma! big.
When the show celebrated its 3,389th performance, many companies were invited to perform on stage at the Schubert. The show opened with the original cast and the following companies appeared throughout the evening: the International, National, Bus and Truck, Las Vegas, Chicago and members of various foreign companies. Near the end of the show, Zach asks the dancers, “what do you do when you can’t dance anymore?” Here the responses were ingeniously presented in different languages, further binding the dancing community together as a kindred soul of people regardless of national origin.
Arguably the single greatest moment of this taping, however, was Diana’s superlative song, “Nothing.” “Ev’ry day for a week we would try to hear the wind rush…” If you can read that sentence without singing it, then you are overdue to see this musical. This song was performed by the actress from the Japanese company entirely in her native language. Since everyone in the audience presumably knew all the words, the effect was beyond entertaining. It was both thrillingly hilarious and a testament to the universality of this “singular sensation.”
Michael Bennett was the genius who conceived, directed and choreographed A Chorus Line. The sheer fluidity of the show is remarkable, never so much as when the dancers step up to the line in their famous poses. The white line painted on the stage is the touchstone for these “Broadway gypsies.” They repeatedly return to the line before spinning out with extraordinary dancing coupled with the heart, sweat and tears of passionate artists living their dream.
In the finale, the lyrics for “One” include the awesome, nervy lyric: “loaded with charisma is my jauntily, sauntering, ambling shambler.” In the mining industry, a shamble is one of a succession of niches above one another that ore travels from platform to platform, thereby raising it to a higher level. In the land of musical theater, A Chorus Line rises to such starry heights as to be a shamble extraordinaire.
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