I’d have done anything to be at the back of the chorus in the late seventies when A Chorus Line came to London’s West End. Just to dance Marvin Hamlisch’s music (there are some live musicians onstage), which is so infectious. I’m sure many in the audience identify with Chorus Line’s before its time Reality TV set-up: the audience, cheering every number, is the star of the evening. The press night air is buzzing with camaraderie, anticipation, and showbiz.
What we witness is a workshop group audition scenario, whose gritty precarious reality Michael Bennett had the presence of mind to make central. A Chorus Line is not about a star breaking out from the chorus, as we have in many musicals (think 42nd Street, a recent Jonathan Church Theatre production with which it has much in common).
It relied, and relies, on the actual verbatim testimony of jobbing dancers, which Bennett recorded. These singing, acting dancers are the kinetic backcloth of any musical comedy; they know on their skins the demands of musical theatre, the long hours of rehearsal, the total commitment.
Influenced by Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, and more, Bennett’s idea hit the spot and became a huge success, winning multiple prizes and playing on Broadway from 1975 till 1990. Baryshnikov and Liza Minnelli were amongst the many famous names eager to see it. They would understand the hard work involved, the desperate need to dance (“What I Did For Love”), to earn a living from dance, and for acclaim and recognition.
How do you take rejection after rejection and keep your spirits up? Or rather fake them whatever the psychological cost of constant rejection. It’s brutal… Smile and carry on. “I Hope I Get It”… Lie about your age, your experience, and reinvent yourself. That’s theatre, any theatre—one of the cast has worked in drag shows—you have to sell yourself. Even if you can't sing—I love the husband and wife team, him covering up for her screechy voice—self-confidence is worth a try.
The unpicking of their sexual (some very intimate stories emerge), biographical and training hinterland falls to jaded director Zach (the lovely Adam Cooper—remember him as Matthew Bourne’s first Swan, the formidable Diaghilev figure in Red Shoes—does not make him harsh or brittle enough in his intrusiveness), and of course, he has backstory, too, with one of the dancers, Cassie (Carly Mercedes Dyer so good in Anything Goes). Cassie is desperate for a chorus line job even though she was once a featured performer; he thinks she’s too good for this. It could be her last job before she is put out to pasture.
The reality of the pitch and the harsh deconstruction of it... You must have seen shows or films where the director sits in the stalls and tells those on stage what to do, with his right hand man, here Larry (Ashley-Jordon Packer), leading the auditioning troupe through their routines. Silver-haired Cooper walks amongst us with a microphone in hand, giving God-like orders from the auditorium and from a desk at the side of the stage.
The seventeen performers have to convince him, and themselves. And us. He only needs eight for his show. Ambitious, needy, damaged, hopes often dashed, how do they go back for more—it’s masochistic, feelings have to be shut down (“Nothing”) but it makes for involving theatre. We all love a ‘true’ story.
The finale shows what he and they have worked towards. In gold lamé tailcoats and top hats, gold glitter raining down on them, they do their Broadway show routine. Howard Hudson’s (I loved his subtle work on When Winston Went To War With The Wireless at the Donmar) garish lighting blinds us to the reality.
The dancers, of varying height (much is made of this), age, gender, size, proportions and beauty, which is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. But looks matter in the dance world, as we, and they, all know: “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.” But when it all comes good, it’s “One Singular Sensation”… “One” takes you back to so many musicals and Hollywood films. There are video back-projection close-ups of some of the dancers: is director Nikolai Foster emulating Ivo van Hove or Katie Mitchell?
There’s ballet (“At The Ballet… everything was beautiful… it wasn’t paradise but it was home”), tap, sharp witty musical comedy, and triggering emotion—I swear I had a tear in my eye in one unguarded moment. The dance cohort does not have to be spectacular, they are the chorus after all, but they have to gel, and how better to gel than to get to know one another even when fiercely competitive. Especially when fiercely competitive.
Bennett said it was about hope. An insider’s guide to the business, the reality behind the glitter and applause, A Chorus Line is touring to Norwich, Canterbury, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, High Wycombe till October.