A Chorus Line – Festival Theatre Til 28 Jan – 3K

Seventeen dancers are brought together to go through their paces before director, Zach (Joshua Horner) and assistant choreographer , Larry (Gerard Carter) and a bare stage on the way to be being whittled down to a group of just eight. The audition goes beyond dancing prowess when Zach asks them to reveal before the group and him their motivations for being in his show and what has driven them to be dancers. From there a pot pourri of personal stories and personalities are revealed.

A Chorus Line is a very different style of big production musical. For starters, there is no ‘girl meets boy’ story, indeed there are no real leading men or women from the group as one may traditionally conceive them, the staging is minimalist – a black backdrop enlivened by the spasmodic appearance of a large mirror – and beyond the aforementioned tales of the 17, no narrative much at all.

Yet, on Broadway, A Chorus Line achieved all manner of awards including nine Tonys and a (then) record for the longest running Broadway musical, with its original season running for 15 years. No doubt the stories told in the immigrant’s city in the immigrant’s nation resonated loudly for patrons there.

Audiences here however may struggle rather more with the show. The singular story lines are never much long enough to give us a reason to embrace any particular character. The two exceptions perhaps are Paul (Euan Doidge) who speaks of his coming out experiences at high school before he is almost immediately struck down (was that for his sins?) with a career ending knee injury and Cassie (Anita Louise Combe) deals with her former love affair with Zach as she seeks to get her once high flying dance career back on track in the chorus line.

While the dancers’ stories are many and varied, some happy but many tragic in various ways, the almost total lack of personal interactions between them leaves those stories somewhat hanging in the air. The process of the final selection of dancers gives us no clues as to what features of those stories made any difference to the decisions made. (Perhaps they didn’t matter – this is a musical afterall.)

There were also times that suggested the show needed a bit of extra polish – a couple of notes and Combe’s solo dance were a bit flat – but that will no doubt come as the Australian tour develops.

The dancing is often exciting with Kurt Douglas as Richie and Leah Lim as Connie two standouts but the Marvin Hamlisch music and songs til near the end are never much to get your toes tapping to.

Any one much involved in the performing arts will embrace A Chorus Line but for those who wear suits it can become a struggle with the razzamatazz and enjoyment of the last 15 minutes potentially a long wait. The fact that the palpable enthusiasm of the opening night crowd dissipated as the show went on was perhaps a sign of how this big musical will be received in this country. The tale of the girl who made it coming from Kansas City is possibly one we have heard before and one that no longer (if it ever did) means much here.

Kryztoff Rating   3K