A Chorus Line loses some of its fancy footing THEATRE

A CHORUS LINE

Book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante. Music by Marvin Hamlisch. Lyrics by Edward Kleban. Directed and choreographed by Rachael Carlson. Produced by Fighting Chance Productions. At the Waterfront Theatre on Thursday, August 24. Continues until September 2

Is there a more Peak Broadway 2

show than A Chorus Line? An anthology of dancers’ personal tales as they suffer through an audition, it was the longest-running production in Broadway history, until Cats beat it out in 1997. Along with Noises Off, it’s a classic of the behind-the-scenes, how-thesausage-gets-made theatrical subgenre.

As with many musicals, the story is an excuse to sing and dance. The plot’s tension, such as it is, revolves around which of the 16 dancers will make the cut.

When an actor plays a president or a baker, we don’t expect him or her to actually make policy or bread. Yet in A Chorus Line, the entire company plays the one percent of triple-threat singerdancer-actors who could credibly land a role in a Broadway show.

In this production, the cast is young, and the ensemble struggled at times. A few stood out—gregory Liow and Lucia Forward for their dance work and Vanessa Quarinto as an all-rounder. It’s difficult material for a young cast—they need to dance and sing, but many also need to deliver heartfelt monologues in between.

According to her program notes, choreographer Rachael Carlson stepped up to direct the production partway through rehearsals. She’s also making her directorial debut. What a tough show to do it on.

For much of the musical, there are 16 to 20 people lined up in a row on-stage. They need to be arranged to draw the audience’s attention to whomever is speaking or singing at a given moment. This challenge extends to the lighting design, which was murky and conspicuously missing a couple of spotlights.

I wondered when the show was meant to be set. The script refers to midcentury icons like Lana Turner and “Astroturf on the patio”, but the costuming suggested the present day, as did the disposable water bottle one performer drank from.

Likewise, the characters introduce themselves and they’re from places from St. Louis to Buffalo to the Bronx. Yet nobody seemed to have a distinct accent. A surer directorial hand and design might have fixed the production to a particular time and place, grounding it for audience and performers alike.

In its staging and design, a welldirected show explains to the audience why it was produced. You leave being able to relate it to your life and the social or political context you’re living in.

That may be asking a lot of a campy musical, but it was hard to find much justification for producing A Chorus Line. The talk of wet dreams, plastic surgery, and gayness were transgressive in 1975. But watching it here, I felt a bit the way a 24-year-old must feel watching Rent: the songs are okay, but the show seems passé.

By tradition, this two-hour show doesn’t have an intermission. Maybe this is meant to make you feel as fatigued as the auditioning characters?

The song “One” (“singular sensation”) has far eclipsed the fame of the show itself. You may know it from a ’90s Visa TV ad or a ghoulish Simpsons parody.

If you’re a fan, go and enjoy that familiar tune, forgiving this production’s shagginess.

A Chorus Line