‘A Chorus Line’ is na ‘Scrooge’ voor een beperkte tijd in het London Palladium te zien. Het is Londens eerste revival van deze Marvin Hamlisch musical en zal worden geregisseerd door Bob Avian die co-choreograaf was voor de originele versie.

‘A Chorus Line’ een musical uit 1975 won op Broadway negen Tony Awards en de Pulitzer Prize. De Londense productie ging in première in 1976 in Theatre Royal Drury Lane en won de Olivier Award voor Best New Musical.

‘A Chorus Line’ is in Londen te zien van 2 februari 2013 tot en met 29 juni 2013.

De website voor de Londense productie is inmiddels in de lucht

http://www.achoruslinelondon.com

Op de site staat dat het de langst lopende broadway-productie is, maar dat is toch the Phantom? Of bedoelen ze daarmee dat het de langstlopende Amerikaanse musical is…

‘A Chorus Line’ was heel lang de langstlopende musical op Broadway maar hebben dat record in 1997 al af moeten geven aan ‘Cats’. En ‘Cats’ weer aan ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’.

Het record voor de langstlopende musical van Amerikaanse origine is sinds 2011 voor de revivalproductie van ‘Chicago’

De lijst met de 10 langstlopende shows op Broadway is momenteel als volgt :

1. The Phantom of the Opera 10225
2. Cats 7485
3. Les Misérables 6680
4. Chicago (Revival) 6552
5. The Lion King 6152
6. A Chorus Line 6137
7. Oh! Calcutta! (Revival) 5959
8. Beauty and the Beast 5461
9. Rent 5124
10. Mamma Mia! 4502

Bron : Playbill

Zo te zien overigens is de Londense versie gebaseerd op huidige Australische tour die ook wordt geregisseerd door Bob Avian.

Ik vind A Chorus Line een erg sterk stuk en zou het graag nog eens zien. Ik vraag me alleen af of het Palladium een geschikt theater is. Ben een beetje bang dat de show te eenvoudig qua opzet is voor zo’n groot theater.

Wij deden One als nummer in onze show case voor een 10 weekse cursus en de muziek is erg fijn! Deze moet ik dus zeker gaan zien!

De eerste namen uit de cast zijn inmiddels bekend gemaakt : John Partridge als Zach, Scarlett Strallen als Cassie, Leigh Zimmerman als Sheila en Victoria Hamilton-Barritt als Diana.

Ik heb de show in 2007 op Broadway gezien. Echt een aanrader en ben zeker van plan om naar Londen te gaan om de show nogmaals te zien (samen met een paar andere shows natuurlijk).

Deze week ging ‘A Chorus Line’ met veel succes in première in het London Palladium. Hieronder een bloemlezing uit de recensies.

Michael Coveney
Whatsonstage.com
★★★

...Bob Avian and Baayork Lee press all the right buttons and creates all the right shivers, it doesn’t have the spark, freshness and killer knock-out punch - or indeed the requisite eeriness - of a Sheffield Crucible revival eight years ago. Marvin Hamlisch’s music, which combines lyrical yearning with brutal functionalism and slap-down theatricality, is as brilliant and infectious as ever, Edward Kleban’s lyrics articulate the dancers’ individual stories of hope and disappointment with sharp lucidity, and the book of James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante manages to suggest urgency in the process while time itself is suspended in rehearsal limbo. It’s terribly poignant, of course, that all of these artists have passed on: the visionary Bennett (who died of Aids, aged just 44, ridiculously under-fulfilled), Kleban, Dante, Kirkwood and now Hamlisch; and so have the legendary Theoni V Aldredge (costumes) and Tharon Musser (lighting). This show, arriving on the back of an Australian revival, is their legacy and their memorial. Maybe that’s a little bit of the problem.

Charles Spencer
Daily Telegraph
★★★★

...The startling simplicity of the show still impresses. A troupe of 23 dancers is auditioning for a musical. They are whittled down first to 17, and then just eight as the audition progresses and there is inherent drama in the fact that the audience is kept guessing as to who will make it into the show. We watch them learning a big ensemble number as well as telling their life stories to the director, Zach (John Partridge) in words, song and dance. The piece was partly based on interviews with real dancers, and sometimes their words seem schmaltzy or banal. But there is much more that is poignant and funny… The climactic staging of the show’s big number “One” with the cast now decked out in glamorous golden costumes rather than rehearsal gear is a glimpse of showbiz heaven, but it is haunting, too. Characters we have come to know individually are suddenly reduced to shiny cogs in the production machine — the fate of all members of a chorus line.

Quentin Letts
Daily Mail
★★★★

...Nearly the whole two-hour show is done with a black-box stage varied only by occasional mirrors (never better than in a thrillingly intense number called ‘The Music and the Mirror’, danced by sinuous Scarlett Strallen). What we are being shown, plainly, is the lack of glamour of the dance life. Fair point. But it don’t half make for a turgid spectacle for one’s eyes. When some gold lamé finally makes it on to the stage in the final number, my retinas almost sobbed with relief. The late Marvin Hamlisch’s music combines rousing riffs, the scorchingly clever song ‘Sing!’ and a central, four-part montage. But there are also occasional patches of something closer to 1970s American TV score infill… After seeing this memorable but challenging show you will certainly never again ignore the high-kickers and smile-pingers of a chorus line.

Claire Allfree
Metro
★★★★

...Some of the script feels a bit dated but there are some knockout performances here — Victoria Hamilton-Barritt as a determined Puerto Rican who stills the auditorium with her rendition of What I Did For Love, Leigh Zimmerman as Sheila, who hides her need for the job beneath a tinder dry cynicism; and Scarlett Strallen as Cassie, the girl too good for the chorus line. You come away infected by the sheer euphoria of show business but also its dirtier, sour undernotes — a ruthless exploiter of dreams that, as the final scene poignantly suggests, invariably reduces even the most determined talent to just another face in the line.

Libby Purves
The Times
★★★★

...Michael Bennett’s show about show-dancers, in its blank mirrored space, lifts and quickens the dullest heart and triumphantly outlasts its gloomy era. The music (by Marvin Hamlisch) certainly does, but so do its people: Bob Avian, one of the original choreographers, directs; Baayork Lee from the original cast restaged the choreography; lighting and costumes from the original are credited… Dance itself is hymned in Ed Kleban’s marvellous lyrics: sigh at the memory of a childhood ballet class. “Up a steep and narrow stairway, to a voice like a metronome. It wasn’t paradise, but it was home!”. What makes the show shine, though, is empathy. The memories and sorrows of a disparate group melt into universal human experience. Two hours straight, at headlong pace: the beautiful, racehorse effort so shines that the first-night audience, in sheer physical sympathy, rose to its feet.

Henry Hitchings
Evening Standard
★★★★

This is an ensemble piece if ever there was one. Yet it honours the feverish dreams of the theatre world’s less treasured individuals, and every character has a turn in the spotlight. Some are more crowd-pleasing than others… Leigh Zimmerman’s Sheila gets a lot of the funniest and sassiest lines, and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt aces the big ballad. Scarlett Strallen’s Cassie is an intriguing blend of high-kicking exhibitionism and confessional despair, and John Partridge, until recently Christian Clarke in EastEnders, makes a suitably imperious Zach… Not everything has stood the test of time - there are moments that feel flat or contrived. And while the music sometimes fizzes, Marvin Hamlisch’s score is not a truly great one… Still, the rhythm of the show is seductive. Its best sequences are exhilarating or raw, and the finale is majestic.

Bron http://www.whatsonstage.com

Er was ook een erg negatieve recensie: express

ABOUT an hour and a half into one of the most humourless, self-regarding, indulgent pieces of musical theatre ever written, one of the characters declares: “Well, this audition is really interesting, isn’t it?”

By: Simon EdgePublished: Fri, February 22, 2013

The producers ought to thank their lucky stars that the audience doesn’t bellow in ­unison: “No!”

A Chorus Line, the kind of homage to itself that only Broadway could produce, consists of a real-time audition.

We start with 28 dancers identified only by numbers and the first 20 minutes involve these numbers being shouted out by director Zach (ex-EastEnder John Partridge), whose charisma bypass puts him somewhere between a boorish drill sergeant and the world’s most obnoxious therapist.

They are then whittled down to 17, who stand in a line and step forward one by one to tell their stories, which are coaxed out of them by an over- amplified, now off-stage Zach.

One of them was bullied at school because he liked dancing. Another had a boob job. A third is gay. No kidding.

These real-life testimonies were contributed by the dancers who originally devised the show in the Seventies, where it really should have stayed. It’s their dancing that makes them interesting, not their lives.

There is no attempt to make them interact as characters, because they aren’t characters, they’re just people and not very intriguing people at that.

Eventually they come together to perform a number called One, which is catchy enough until you’ve heard it for 20 minutes, but that’s the kind of show this is — it beats you so remorselessly over the head with its dullness that you end up hating the good bits. Even the choreography looks mired in a Seventies time warp.

The drama of an audition may have seemed original four decades ago but not in the age of X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. I found myself yearning for the eye rolls of Simon Cowell and the cliches of Dermot O’Leary, just to pep it up.

It runs for two hours without an interval and the only redeeming feature is a flawless line-up of hoofers, including Partridge — who makes up for his lack of charm with some impressive high kicks — plus established stars Scarlett Strallen and Leigh Zimmerman and younger folk like Partridge’s real-life partner Jon Tsouras. But it’s a very limited redemption.

The Guardian is enthousiast en geeft 4 sterren

Michael Billington
The Guardian
★★★★

“Nothing runs for ever,” says a character in A Chorus Line. Maybe not; but this show, which started its life at the Public theatre in New York in 1975, enjoyed a record-breaking 15-year spell on Broadway. And even if TV has since bombarded us with backstage dramas about the anguish of auditions, this musical stands up strongly to revival.

Part of the magic of Michael Bennett’s original concept lies in its ambivalence. Clearly the show was intended to make us aware of the individuality of the regimented hoofers who form the backdrop of any musical. As the director whittles a group of auditioning hopefuls down to a final eight, we hear the dancers’ confessions: we learn about their broken homes, aspirations to stardom, fear of failure and, in the touching case of a Puerto Rican guy, his shame at being found by his parents dancing in a drag revue. But in the famous final number, One, we rejoice at seeing the dancers perform in glorious unison. It reminds me of Arnold Wesker’s Chips With Everything where, however much we may resent it, we still choke with emotion at the sight of a group of raw RAF servicemen being transformed into a perfectly drilled ensemble.

The other secret of the show’s success lies in its fluidity of form. Marvin Hamlisch’s numbers, with one exception, arise naturally from the stories being told. As the sexually aggressive Sheila describes how the ballet offered her an escape from domestic conflict, others pick up the theme and float into an evocation of classical dance. And Cassie, described as “too good for the chorus” by the director, expresses her desperation through whirling movement: Scarlett Strallen’s sensational angst here brings to mind the manic edge that Lynn Seymour brought to Kenneth MacMillan’s tormented heroines. The one moment when the show lapses is in the yearningly romantic What I Did for Love, which became a detachable hit, but seems out of sync with the situation.

That is one of the few flaws in an excellent show that makes no claims to rework the original. Bob Avian, the director, co-choreographed the 1975 production with Bennett and has reproduced it with loving fidelity. But the current cast bring their own personalities to the roles and, in addition to Strallen, there is striking work from Leigh Zimmerman as the sassy Sheila, Victoria Hamilton-Barritt as a would-be actor, and Gary Wood as the Puerto Rican boy who always longed to be Cyd Charisse. That, in a sense, is the permanent paradox of A Chorus Line: it hymns the individuals who are finally turned into figures of glittering anonymity.

Bron : http://www.theguardian.co.uk

Ook vier sterren van The Independent

Paul Taylor
The Independent
★★★★

Hang on to those golden toppers; A Chorus Line is back in town for the first time in over three decades. And, make no mistake, it’s alive and kicking. Michael Bennett’s legendary 1975 show has been lovingly recreated here by director Bob Avian (who was his original co-choreographer) and by Baayork Lee (one of the original cast) who has re-staged the dancing. The indelible design elements are the same — the empty black box with its painted white line and the twirling mirrors at the rear. The Seventies context has been left wholly intact. But there’s no whiff of mothballs or of the odour of sanctity about this production which is a miracle of seamlessness. The splendid (largely British) cast have made a sizzling connection with the show’s timeless spirit of dedication to one’s art through thick and thin and project it with exhilarating flair and force.

As they audition for eight places in a Broadway chorus, the seventeen hoofers are forced by the prurient God-like director Zach (John Partridge) to lay bare their souls in a kind of terpsichorean psychotherapy session. So each gets his or her turn in the literal and figurative spotlight. It’s particularly invidious to single people out in these circumstances but I loved Leigh Zimmerman’s Sheila, a leggy, delectably arch Miss Been Around and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt who brings a hilarious, gutsy to attack to “Nothing”, an account of her humiliations at the hands of a high-school Method Acting teacher, that is one of the best songs in Marvin Hamlisch’s snappy, agile score.

The nearest thing to a female lead is Cassie, the director’s ex-girlfriend who is attempting to re-enter the chorus after a failed solo career. A desperate hunger to dance and a graphic emotional neediness pour out of Scarlett Strallen’s body in the extraordinary sequence “The Music And The Mirror” where, multiply reflected, she performs a jagged quarrel between vulnerability and defiance.  “We’re all special,” is Cassie’s riposte to Zach when he tells her she’s good merge into the background.  But it’s a paradox of the show (or evidence of its double standards) that every atom of one’s being celebrates when all these individuals unite into a glittering well-oiled machine for the hypnotic closing number which, as thrillingly executed here, is one collective (as well as singular) sensation.  Long before The X-Factor, A Chorus Line understood the drama of the elimination-process but it sets its sights higher than exploiting dabblers who fancy a fix of instant fame.

Bron : www. independent.co.uk

Mark Shenton voor The Stage is ook enthousiast over ‘A Chorus Line’

No musical has ever offered quite as uncompromising, harsh and heartfelt a glimpse at the sheer grit, determination and sometimes desperation behind the apparent glamour of the careers of hoofers as A Chorus Line, Broadway’s defining tribute to the rank-and-file members who make up its backbone. And the ultimate paradox of Michael Bennett’s modern masterpiece is that the dazzling ensemble cast is itself full of star turns.

The show has been spellbindingly revived in London by its original co-choreographer Bob Avian, who now directs, and Baayork Lee, who is one of the show’s original cast faithfully restaging its choreography.
Here’s a musical that celebrates the chorus, yet is rich in individuality. The auditionees for a new show must perform for its director Zach (the buff, bearded John Partridge, who proves that he can more than do it himself but is mostly heard as a disembodied, constantly challenging voice on a mic from the back of the stalls). There are 17 auditionees in the final line-up who Zach and his assistant Larry (former New Adventures dancer Alastair Postlethwaite) put through their paces, but only four boys and four girls will make the final cut.

Long before The X Factor made this kind of battle public, here is the ultimate elimination spectacle, and the stakes are high. Especially for Scarlett Strallen’s Cassie, who has managed to previously achieve featured roles, but after a failed attempt at making a career in LA, is now seeking a return to the chorus. Strallen, who began her career on this very stage in the chorus of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang before taking over the lead role in that show, lives and breathes the part. She also once spent time searching for work in LA and this helps her bring the fibre of lived experience - as well as her extraordinary dancer’s limbs - to Cassie.

But then every single person on this stage has been directed with a fine sense of detail and drama to inhabit their roles without inhibition. Leigh Zimmerman’s Sheila is quite brilliant as she prowls the stage with an overpowering sense of attitude that is clearly defensive, but sometimes seems offensive. Victoria Hamilton-Barritt’s Diana cuts a more piercingly vulnerable figure, from her wonderful rendition of Nothing - about her experiences at drama school - to the haunting What I Did for Love.

These dancers pay a heavy price, personal as well as professional, to pursue their dreams. Along the way, we get their many stories, none more beautifully told than Gary Wood’s Paul, the gay dancer whose parents discover him in a drag revue. The Palladium isn’t a theatre that lends itself easily to a solo monologue, but Wood holds the stage effortlessly with the force of his words and the stillness with which he tells it.

A Chorus Line speaks loudest to those in the business, but it is also a tale of universal struggle, of striving to fulfil a dream, of the brutality of rejection, and the opportunity to gain a second chance in life. Who hasn’t experienced each of those?

After the sudden death of its composer Marvin Hamlisch last August, the show is also now a tribute to him (as well as writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, who co-wrote the book, and lyricist Edward Kleban). But as long as this show - now 38 years old - is playing, they will be remembered forever. It is its own unmissable living memorial.

Bron : http://www.thestage.co.uk

is de show niet te kort zo zonder pauze ? jammer van een hele theateravond of lijkt ditzo

A Chorus Line hoort zonder pauze.