In Broadway's rush to revive everything that ran longer than Carrie, it was inevitable that the return of A Chorus Line should be announced…and it has been. A new production is planned for next year…a re-creation of the original, complete with much the same choreography.
The original version ran fifteen years, making it the longest-running Broadway show ever until 42nd Street and a couple of Andrew Lloyd Webber efforts stole that distinction. But A Chorus Line has had a staggering number of regional and local productions over the years, which is one reason I'm skeptical that the magic will reignite. Even assuming the new production is as wonderful as the original — which is assuming a lot — the show has grown very familiar and also very dated. In fact, it grew dated while on Broadway. At some point in the original run, they declared it a period piece and added to the program books that the events were set in 1975. Apparently, that will be the time of this and all future productions, which is fine. Better that than someone interjecting gratuitous contemporary references. Still, it has that "seventies" sensibility and I suspect insufficient time has passed for it to become a genuine relic of another era the way Grease or 42nd Street or even any good mounting of Guys and Dolls oozes history. Twenty years from now, sure…but now?
Some shows have a way of becoming too familiar. There are plans for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick to reunite in The Odd Couple, another play that I love but feel has been done to death. I'm guessing tickets will be hard to get for that production but not because anyone is dying to see The Odd Couple. Big, billable star names are simply one way a revival can justify its existence. Another is if the material has been rethought and modernized in some manner…but this revival of A Chorus Line will have neither of those qualities. It's not being updated and the show, almost by definition, cannot have stars. The whole point of it — and one reason the movie with Michael Douglas missed the point — is that the quasi-anonymous members of the chorus are the stars. (The tepid reception to the movie also does not bode well for the new Broadway version.)
What the new Chorus Line will have going for it is that the original was around so long that it was many a theatergoer's first great stage experience. We all have those shows that loom large in our memories…that wonderful evening that changed our lives, at least a little. Like junkies desperate to relive that first great high, we trudge to a lot of plays, hoping to experience the tingle yet again. So when tickets go on sale for this new production, a lot of people are going to pounce, figuring the experience will roll back 25+ years and bring forth the same feeling of wonderment. Many will want to take their children so that they might experience the same thing. This will sell a lot of tickets but I can't help but anticipate a lot of disappointment for both adults trying to buck Tom Wolfe and revisit their past…and kids who've been told how transforming it will be. After a few decades of MTV dancing with special effects and rapid cutting, the choreography will seem unremarkable…and the stories of the dancers, which seemed raw and emotional at the time, will seem sitcom simple. Everyone has heard more candid self-revelation on reality shows…and from the real people, not from actors reading lines. A lot of tickets will be sold but I'm guessing a lot of people will exit the theater muttering, "Uh, they must have changed something…"
Incidentally, the press releases all make the point that this new production is under the supervision of "the surviving creators." It's being directed by Bob Avian, who assisted the late Michael Bennett in staging the original, and Marvin Hamlisch — who wrote the music — is overseeing the arrangements and whatever. But one key "creator" is still unmentioned, that being Neil Simon. For years, until it was mentioned in a couple of books, one of the worst-kept secrets of Broadway was that Mr. Simon did a surreptitious punch-up on the script for A Chorus Line, adding jokes where applicable, as a favor to Bennett. For this, Simon received neither cash nor credit…which would be a major injustice if anyone thought the man had any lack of either in his life. He had to be content that he did it for love.