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Thirty
years ago.
The first time I saw A Chorus Line, I was
the same age as the youngest character. The
baby on the line. Twenty years old. I was
leaving the next morning for a junior year
abroad in France. I sat in the front row of
the mezzanine, sandwiched between my two
best college girlfriends and my two parents
and as Paul’s monologue unfolded, I nearly
panicked. I was sure my parents were hearing
me in Paul’s words. And when Paul recounted
how his father had asked the producer to
take care of his son, I thought I could hear
my father asking the same thing. The
difference being that I wasn’t heading off
to do a drag show, but merely heading into
the world: “And now life really begins. Go
to it.”
And then during my senior year of college,
the theatre department took a trip to New
York and all the theatre majors came back to
campus singing “What I Did For Love.”
All spring term, “What I Did For Love” rang
across the quad from the dorm where the
artsy-theatre kids hung out.
And when I lived in San Francisco after
college, I played the cast album in my tiny
room, a subconscious reminder to my
roommates, and to me, that I really belonged
in New York.
And then a couple years later, there was
that Christmas Eve day in New York when I
bought the cast album a second time, because
somewhere in transit, I’d lost my first copy
– and oh, how we played that album, over and
over, in our first New York apartment, which
happened to be the apartment directly below
Cleavant Derricks, Tony Award winner for
Dreamgirls. And how many hours did we spend
debating whether Dreamgirls or A Chorus Line
was the number one Broadway musical of all
time.
And then there was that late September day
in 1983 when A Chorus Line became the
longest-running show in Broadway history
with its 3,389th performance. That
afternoon, there was an invited black-tie
dress, and fortunately, my best friend was
in the business and we scored two tickets.
Everyone was buzzing with anticipation and
44th Street was closed to all traffic and
when the show began, Michael Bennett had a
cast of 332 dancers from four continents all
parading down the aisles of the Shubert
Theatre and singing in a multitude of
languages representing the various touring
companies of A Chorus Line— And thereafter,
it seemed there was no argument (and
contrary to what the marquee on the Winter
Garden then said about Cats): for now and
forever, it would always be A Chorus Line.
And over the next six years, the ten or so
performances we witnessed, sometimes as a
consequence of Theatre Development Fund
ticket offers, and sometimes because my
parents were in town, and now it was no
longer so unsettling to sit next to them
during Paul’s monologue because now I was
there with them, with my boyfriend, holding
hands.
And then, there was that late September
afternoon in 1987: Michael Bennett’s
memorial service. And though there were
speakers placed outside, all along Shubert
Alley, to enable an overflow crowd to hear
the service and “the celebration of
Michael’s life,” there were actually empty
seats inside the Shubert Theatre, one right
next to me, for example, and perhaps because
at that point in the AIDS epidemic, people
were too enervated by grief to hear tributes
– even to a creative genius dead too soon.
And even our neighbor Cleavant Derricks,
after singing his number, left the service
early because as he said, “I couldn’t take
it any more,” a remark which mirrored his
line from Dreamgirls where he sang, “I can’t
sing any more sad songs.” That’s how it was
then, the sense of loss so palpable, from so
many walks of life.
And finally, that day late in April 1990
when A Chorus Line played its 6,137th and
final performance in New York. And how for
so long thereafter, to walk by the Shubert
Theatre of an evening when the sun was
settling over the Hudson River, there was
something strange, something missing now
that the words A CHORUS LINE were no longer
in white lights high above Shubert Alley.
Sixteen years ago. A Chorus Line has been
gone from New York for sixteen years – but
not absent from the heartland. High school
productions and college productions and
summer stock and touring companies have kept
those songs and monologues alive for a new
generation of dancers. And during those
years when A Chorus Line was playing
everywhere but New York, there were nights
when, driving to our country house, we’d pop
in a tape, one of those compilations of
music made in the last days before CDs – and
through the dark of night, we’d be singing,
“There’s a lot, I am not, certain of…. Hello
twelve, hello, thirteen, hello, love.”
A Chorus Line stored on the gene code –
waiting for the revival. We knew it would
happen. We talked about it. Some day they’re
going to revive A Chorus Line. And that day
has now arrived.
At the Schoenfeld Theatre (formerly known as
the Plymouth when A Chorus Line was last in
town), seventeen new gypsies face the
audience. Some fresher than others, some
seasoned Broadway vets, such as Charlotte
d’Amboise and Michael Berresse. The house is
sold-out, albeit filled with corporate
suits, bearing their logo’ed gift bags. The
median age is easily fifty to sixty. And
then the lights dim – and there it comes, at
last, that welcome command to attention:
“Again. Five, six, seven, eight”
It’s impossible to be objective, not with
something so indelibly printed on the memory
bank. The show and its history have
paralleled our adulthood. Our history in New
York. In essence, we’ve always had A Chorus
Line, which means, perhaps, our life might
be inconceivable without it. Or at the very
least, our life would be different. Thirty
years have passed since I first saw this
show from the front mezzanine. Nearly two
generations of life and death. And yet to
hear again those lyrics and the monologues
so familiar as to be almost liturgical is to
be transported back – and to make real the
old adage, If I knew then what I know now.
Because that’s what the current revival
enables each and every one of us first
touched by this show however many years ago:
a chance to go there again. To that place of
first discovery: be it of love, sexuality,
life, career, fame or glory. To live again
that sense of wonder when so much was in
front of us, waiting, just out of reach, and
all of it marvelously fresh.
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