Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.“I really need this job.” A Chorus Line’s opening number, “I Hope I Get It”, never lacked resonance, but these days it is not just jobbing Broadway hoofers who are feeling insecure. Michael Bennett’s groundbreaking 1975 audition musical (songs by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban) made the casting process itself the story, tearing off the lamé and sequins to disclose the sweat and desperation of the average dancer’s life.With no dazzling sets, no story to speak of and certainly no stars, it was viewed doubtfully by the business. But then audiences went wild for the looping irony of a show about 17 unknowns vying for a place on a chorus line — when they are all in fact excelling in a chorus line — in . . . A Chorus Line.Zach the director (Adam Cooper, magisterial and tender) is looking for more than just slickness. He wants to strip away the artifice of performance and peer into each dancer’s soul. His sidekick, Larry, prowls the line-up with a camera blowing up each face — apprehensive, sassy, flirtatious, insecure — on a huge screen. The filming is a modern touch in a production otherwise faithful to its original era, complete with references to Doris Day, The Ed Sullivan Show and Jill St John.That particular cultural moment, when gay liberation was gathering speed but acceptance was slower, is perhaps why the men’s stories seem so much more affecting than the women’s. Dance was still an unsettling career choice for a boy. The dancers fudge their racial origins as well as their ages. Puerto Rican becomes Italian, while “Gregory Gardner” (Bradley Delarosbel) conceals his Jewishness under a new name. Lanky Bobby Mills (Toby Seddon) is just an oddball. Shy Paul San Marco pours out his confusion and shame when his parents witness his teenage drag act, a genuinely affecting if under-amplified moment from Manuel Pacific.The space is bare save for mirrors and the grimy backs of stage-flats to evoke the glamour-free atmosphere of auditions. The briefly glimpsed musicians, concealed behind the flats, play facing the wall (have they been very naughty?). Lighting designer Howard Hudson brings a touch of the metaphysical with elaborate rigs swooping and dropping, while lamps glow, pulsate and twinkle, illuminating the dancers’ very dreams; these are people who come to life under a spotlight. Dry ice drifts, insubstantial as fame itself.Camaraderie is movingly conveyed: director Nikolai Foster has the troupe, beginning as stiff strangers, bonding under duress, showing care and commiseration with tiny glances and touches. Choreographer Ellen Kane crafts routines and vignettes that bring each character into focus. Al and Kristine (Joshua Lay and Katie Lee) perform an endearing, (deliberately) tone-deaf double act in “Sing!” while Redmand Rance wows with his backflips as super-confident Mike Costa in “I Can Do That”. The accomplished Ashley-Jordon Packer as Larry merely has to dance better than anyone else, with an I’m-not-one-of-you aloofness. A brief subplot involves Zach’s entanglement with former star Cassie (Carly Mercedes Dyer), now forced to slum it on the Line.The enduring appeal of A Chorus Line is surely that it dramatises the choice everyone faces in some fashion: whether to be a star or a team player. If the former, can you handle the loneliness? If the latter, the competition? Cassie is every eager job-hunter who has ever been told they are overqualified. A last bit of theatrical magic has the troupe, even the rejects, transform for the glitziest of top-hatted closing numbers, but now we can see every one of them as a star.★★★★★To August 25, sadlerswells.com
