A Chorus Line Review ★★★★★

The life of chorus performers is brutal. Every day thousands of hopefuls audition for musical jobs; every day just a handful are successful, the disappointed majority returning to scraping a living in precarious, soul-destroying jobs, until the next audition.

Still they dream on – and A Chorus Line offers a gripping account of the hopes and dreams of a motley group of hoofers auditioning for a job in a forthcoming show. That this 1975 musical feels so true to life is due to its creator Michael Bennett’s decision to build it on the testimonies of real life chorus dancers – then a pioneering device.

Archie Durrant (Mark Anthony), Manuel Pacific (Paul San Marco) and Jocasta Almgill (Diana Morales). Photo: Marc Brenner
With book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, catchy and memorable music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban, A Chorus Line is as enticing today as when it premiered on Broadway becoming an instant, long-lived hit.

The current spruced up revival by Leicester Curve, the responsibility of the theatre’s artistic director Nikolai Foster, premiered post-Covid in 2021 and is touring. It updates some of the original references, has new, sparkling choreography by Ellen Kane and uses a hand-held camera to offer close ups of the dancers’ faces, but otherwise it sticks faithfully to the original.

An audition is in progress on a denuded Broadway theatre stage, the sole props a few mirrors at the back, a bank of riser platforms and a scaffold tower that hides the excellent band, under the direction of Matthew Spalding.

The 17 hopefuls in practice costumes (designer Edd Lindley) are being put through their paces by the exacting director Zach (Adam Cooper) and his assistant Larry (Ashley Jordan-Parry). Among them is Zach’s former lover Cassie (Carly Mercedes Dyer) a leading lady fallen on hard times and desperate for a job, even if it’s only in the chorus.

Zach asks the dancers to talk about themselves and individual talent and personality come across in numbers such as Mike's ‘I Can Do That’, thrillingly performed by Redmand Rance.

Redmand Rance (Mike Costa) and the cast of A Chorus Line. Photo: Marc Brenner
The musical numbers vary between the bitter-sweet wistfulness of ‘At the Ballet’, where everything is dreamy and perfect in contrast with real life, and the defiant, never-say-never spirit of ‘Dance: Ten; Looks: Three’, with its cheeky refrain ‘tits and arse’ performed with tremendous verve by Chloe Saunders as Val.

Redmand Rance (Mike Costa), Chloe Saunders (Val Clarke) and Rachel Jayne Picar (Connie Wong). Photo: Marc Brenner
With each committed performance we come to care for the character portrayed, be they the sad, much-abused Paul (Manuel Pacific), or the strong-willed Puerto Rican Diana Morales, performed by Jocasta Almgill, whose rendition of the anthemic ‘What I Did for Love’ will long remain in the memory.

Carly Mercedes Dyer was in great voice for Cassie’s big number ‘The Music and the Mirror’. I have to say, though, that Adam Cooper, formerly a Royal Ballet principal and the originator of role of the Swan in Matthew Bourne’s male Swan Lake, is not so great an actor, and with little chemistry between them the central confrontation between Cassie and Zach fell a little flat.

No matter. This revival of A Chorus Line is beautifully paced and builds up to a rapturous, high-kicking finale, the cast’s golden costumes enhanced by spurts of of golden pyrotechnics and showers of confetti - golden, of course. It’s a glorious show in a heart-warming, deeply humane production.