Sadler’s Wells | ★★★★✩
The smiling but mute line of synchronicity is a hallmark of the great Broadway musical. The kicking, teethy backdrop to the main character gave the art form glitz. But it also became a symbol of simple-minded optimism. It made people who say they don’t like musicals a respectable way of dismissing an entire art form on the grounds that realism is more authentic.
Marvin Hamlish’s first musical is the antidote to the chorus line’s reputation. It opened in 1975 and went down in history as the longest running show on Broadway before the run ended in 1990 (later to be knocked off that pedestal by Evita).
The show turned the chorus line’s anonymity into a phalanx of humanity. The plot, such as it exists, is more a framework in which each of the 17 hopefuls at an audition for a Broadway show are made to tell the auditioning director Zach (Adam Cooper) about their backgrounds in order to help him choose who makes the cut and who does not.
They are a diverse bunch. From Sidney Kenneth Beckenstein (or Rochmel Lev Ben Yokov Meyer Beckenstein to use his Jewish name) to Paul San Marco, the Puerto Rican for whom showbiz was the ticket out of a life of either being picked on or ignored, each has a painful story to tell about how they ended up putting themselves through the hell of auditions like these.
Their stories are danced as well as told, of course, and Redmand Rance sets the talent bar at a very high level when his Mike Costa relates how watching his sister dance made him think: I can do that. And he can, with light-speed tap dancing, intentional pratfalls and acrobatic leaps that would grace the Olympics.
Carly Mercedes Dyer as Cassie Photo: Marc Brenner
Director Nikolai Foster’s use of on-stage live cameras might have seemed as if he was jumping on the video projection bandwagon so often is the technique now used. But it is hard to think of a better way of getting close to the anxieties of these dancers than to have their faces projected big enough to betray every nervous tick.
I hated Foster’s long running and popular revival of Grease which like this show started life at Curve, Leicester. It’s fine for that score and memories of the Travolta and Newton John double act keep their place in history. But you could keep the music and flush the meathead-meets-girl plot and the world would be no poorer.
This production, however, makes an irresistible case for a revival. Howard Hudson’s lighting design places the action beneath three pivoting banks of lights that could illuminate Wembley football stadium. Yet sometimes the beams focus on just one dancer as they move as if dancing were the antidote to all life throws at them. Each has the talent to be a star is this show’s message. A shame then that the job they are so desperate to get will erase anything that is unique. But that’s chorus lines for you.
