'A Chorus Line' at Marriott: Glorious 'Chorus Line' sheds Broadway shackles and kicks up its heels
THEATER REVIEW: "A Chorus Line" ★★★★ Through Oct. 31 at Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire; $35-$48 at 847-634-0200 and www.marriotttheatre.com
After 35 years — oh my! — the musical “A Chorus Line” is no ordinary piece of musical theater. Despite the flash, the pizzazz, the catchy Marvin Hamlisch tunes, the “step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch, again,” this is at heart the story of the struggles of ordinary laboring people. In its celebration of craft and toil — and its depiction of the inevitable wear on our bodies and souls — it's no different, really, than the great Studs Terkel's “Working.”
And for an audience, especially for a young audience, it has a similar revelatory and transfixing power.
“A Chorus Line,” about a group of Broadway performers auditioning for spots on a chorus line, has for dancers become a sacred text. There's irony there, because “A Chorus Line” has roots in exploitation. In an era when few paid attention to the residual value of his or her own life story, a bunch of dancers bared their souls and spilled their secrets and allowed the late Michael Bennett to control the tape. Only in 2008 did some of those original cast members have their roles as authors more justly recognized. The stories that are enthralling audiences — and Sunday night's audience was hanging on every note and step — at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire are rooted in real strife.