| |
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.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
|
|
