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A Chorus Line

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This article is about the stage production. For the 1985 film adaptation, see A Chorus Line.
A Chorus Line
MusicMarvin Hamlisch
LyricsEdward Kleban
BookJames Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante

A Chorus Line is a musical with a book by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and music by Marvin Hamlisch.

The musical was derived from several taped sessions with Broadway dancers, aka "Gypsies," including eight who eventually appeared in the original cast. With nineteen main characters, it is set on the bare stage of a Broadway theatre during an audition for chorus line members of a musical. The show gives a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers.

A Chorus Line opened off-Broadway at The Public Theater on May 21, 1975. Advance word had created such a demand for tickets that the entire run sold out immediately. Producer Joseph Papp decided to move the production uptown, and on July 25 it opened at the Shubert Theatre, where it ran for 6,137 performances. It held the distinction of being the longest running show in Broadway history until its record was surpassed by Cats in 1997 and then The Phantom of the Opera in 2006. It currently stands as the fifth longest-running musical ever, following The Fantasticks, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Les Misérables.

The show was conceived, directed and co-choreographed (with Bob Avian) by Michael Bennett. The original cast included Scott Allen, Kelly Bishop, Wayne Cilento, Chuck Cissel, Baayork Lee, Priscilla Lopez, Donna McKechnie, and Thommie Walsh.

A Chorus Line received 12 Tony Award nominations, winning nine: Best Musical, Best Actress (McKechnie), Best Featured Actor (Sammy Williams), Best Featured Actress (Bishop), Best Director, Best Musical Book, Best Score (Hamlisch and Kleban), Best Lighting Design, and Best Choreography. It also won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, one of the few musicals ever to receive this honor, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the season.

A Chorus Line also toured successfully, including a run at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. A production mounted at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London's West End won the Laurence Olivier Award as Best Musical of the Year 1976, the first year in which the awards were presented. An unsuccessful film adaptation was released in 1985.

The first Broadway revival of the show opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on October 4 2006 following a run in San Francisco. The show was directed by Bob Avian, with the choreography reconstructed by the show's original Connie Wong, Baayork Lee. The opening night cast included Brad Anderson, Michael Berresse, Charlotte d'Amboise, Mara Davi, Heather Parcells, Alisan Porter, and Chryssie Whitehead.

Since its inception, the show's many worldwide productions, both professional and amateur, have been a major source of income for The Public Theater.

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler At an audition for an upcoming Broadway production, a director and a choreographer assistant put the Gypsies through their paces. Every dancer is desperate for work, and in "I Hope I Get It" they try to do their best. After the first selection, 17 dancers remain: Al, Bobby, Bebe, Connie, Diana, Don, Greg, Judy, Kristine, Maggie, Mark, Mike, Paul, Richie, Sheila, Val and Cassie (the only dancer without a number). Zach, the director, tells them he is looking for a strong dancing chorus of four boys and four girls. He wants to learn more about them, so he tells them to introduce themselves.

With great reluctance they reveal their pasts. In order to get this job, they must put themselves on the line. While the show uses different characters to move through the audition, the overall pattern of stories progresses chronologically from early life experiences through adulthood to the end of a career.

The first candidate is Mike, who explains he is the youngest of twelve children. In "I Can Do That", Mike recalls his first experience with dance, watching his sister's dance class when he was a pre-schooler. Certain he could do it too, he took her place one day when she refused to go to class – and he stayed the rest of his life. As Bobby, who tries to hide the unhappiness of his childhood by making jokes, speaks, the 17 dancers have misgivings about this strange audition process and debate what they should reveal to Zach ("And..."), but since they all need the job, the session continues.

Zach starts to question the streetwise Sheila and becomes angry, since he thinks that she is not taking the audition seriously. She starts to open up and reveals that her mother married at a young age and her father neither loved nor cared for them. When she was six, she realized that ballet was a relief from her family life. Bebe adds that she likes ballet as she was not beautiful as a child and everything in ballet seems beautiful. Maggie admits another connection to the Ballet: she loves ballet because in the ballet someone is always there, unlike the father she has never had. They sing "At The Ballet," which is a poignant tribute to the escape Sheila, Bebe, and Maggie found in the beauty of ballet.

Kristine is up next, supported by her husband Al. The scatter-brained Kristine is tone-deaf, and her lament that she could never "Sing!" is perpetually interrupted by Al finishing her phrases. Zach moves on to Mark, the youngest of the dancers who is more than eager to be on Broadway. His story about his first experiences with pictures of the female anatomy and his first wet dream lead into "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love," a montage sequence in which all of the dancers share memories of adolescence. Gregory speaks about his discovery of his homosexuality, and Diana recollects her horrible high school acting class ("Nothing"). Don remembers his first job at a nightclub, Richie recounts how he nearly became a kindergarten teacher, Judy reflects on her problematic childhood, and the 4'10" tall Connie rants on the problems of being short.

"Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" follows, with the newly-buxom Val's explanation that talent doesn't count for everything with casting directors and silicone can really help.

The dancers go downstairs to learn a song for the next section of the audition, but Cassie stays onstage. She is a terrific veteran "gypsy" who has had some notable successes as a soloist. It emerges they have a history together; he cast her in a featured part in a former show and they had lived together for several years before breaking up. Zach tells Cassie that she is too good for the chorus and shouldn't be there at the audition - she should be out dancing solos. But she hasn't been able to find work and is attempting to "come home" to the chorus and start again. "The Music and the Mirror" tells of Cassie's passion for dance.

After Cassie's plea, Zach agrees to allow her to go downstairs and learn the combination with the rest of "the kids." Zach calls Paul back on stage and what follows is a monologue in which the emotionally vulnerable Paul comes to terms with his early career in a drag act, manhood, homosexuality and sense of self.

Cassie and Zach's complex relationship resurfaces in the first rendition of "One." Cassie, due to her talent, is standing out. When she starts "dancing down" Zach runs up on stage and confronts her, and the argument develops to delving into what went wrong in their relationship and her career. Zach points to the good-but-not-great dancing of the rest of the cast, the Gypsies who will probably never get out of the line. Cassie replies, "I'll take chorus, if you'll take me!"

Suddenly, during a tap sequence, Paul, the best dancer in the group, falls injured and is carried off to the hospital: his career is over. Zach asks the remaining dancers what they will do when they can no longer dance. "What I Did For Love" expresses the emotional drive that keeps these dancers focused, ever hopeful and free of regrets. This number fades into the final elimination process as the final eight dancers are selected: Cassie, Bobby, Diana, Judy, Val, Mike, Mark and Richie.

"One" (reprise/finale) begins with an individual bow for each of the 19 characters, their hodgepodge rehearsal clothes replaced by identical spangled gold costumes. As each dancer joins the group, it is suddenly difficult to distinguish one from the other. Ironically, each character who was an individual to the audience is now an anonymous member of an ensemble. (William J. McKay, "Michael Bennett's A Chorus Line," Musicals 101, 1998.) Template:Endspoiler

Musical numbers

  • "I Hope I Get It" (Company)
  • "I Can Do That" (Mike)
  • "And..." (Bobby, Richie, Val and Judy)
  • "At the Ballet" (Sheila, Bebe and Maggie)
  • "Sing!" (Kristine, Al and cast)
  • "Montage Part 1: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love" (Company)
  • "Montage Part 2: Nothing" (Diana)
  • "Montage Part 3: Mother" (Company)
  • "Montage Part 4: Gimme The Ball" (Company)
  • "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three (Tits and Ass)" (Val)
  • "The Music and the Mirror" (Cassie)
  • "One" (Cast)
  • "The Tap Combination" (Company)
  • "What I Did for Love" (Diana and Company)
  • "One" (Reprise) (Company)

Trivia

During the musical's workshop sessions, random characters would be chosen at the end for the chorus, resulting in genuine surprise among the cast. Subsequent productions have the same set of characters winning their auditions. (William J. McKay, "Michael Bennett's A Chorus Line," Musicals 101, 1998.)

A Chorus Line in other media

  • In an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, Debra becomes upset at Ray for suggesting that she and Ray's brother's girlfriend are competing for his mother's favor. She pretends she is in a show and twirls an imaginary baton while singing "One".
  • In the Scrubs episode "My Malpractical Decision", JD pictures malpractice lawyer Neena Broderick dancing down the hallway of the hospital while kicking all the male workers to the tune of the song "One."
  • In the Family Guy episode One If by Clam, Two If by Sea, Peter plays "What I Did For Love" on drinking glasses.
  • In the Full House episode Our Very First Telathon, Danny and Rebecca sing "What I Did For Love."
  • In the episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where Vivian wants to be a dancer, one of the women says that she was in A Chorus Line
  • In The Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror V, the Simpson family, turned inside-out by a mysterious fog, sings to the tune of "One."
  • In the Malcolm In The Middle episode Mini-Bike, Lois' store co-worker Craig is in the bathroom singing to himself "I Hope I Get It" in the hopes of being asked out on a date by her.
  • In the recent fantasy novel, Changeling, the main characters Neef and Changeling travel to Between Broadway, looking for tickets to Peter Pan, and they bump into the original cast of A Chorus Line (the final 8), who become very helpful in their quest.
  • In an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Salem is doing karate moves, when Sabrina says, "Let me guess, they're doing A Chorus Line, and you're Cassie."
  • In the film Mrs. Doubtfire, the main character Daniel goes to a TV station and plays with toy dinosours (making them sing and dance) and calls it a "Dinosaurousline".

A Chorus Line milestones at a glance

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