‘O god, I need this job’. A Chorus Line at MacEwan, a review

There is something so moving about seeing what 17 talented young theatre up-and-comers under an expert director bring to a classic. And the 50-year-old musical that’s the season finale and showcase for MacEwan University theatre arts’ graduating actors in Jim Guedo’s exciting production, is a musical theatre icon.

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There’s the dance, of course. Not only is A Chorus Line a full-on dance musical, replete with complex dance numbers, and numbers about auditioning to do dance numbers, and numbers that are all about how to somehow glean — and meet! — the insanely complicated and mysterious demands of a director, creator Michael Bennett’s stand-in. But it’s a musical that’s actually, dramatically, about that life.

It takes us backstage in 1975, where dancers are auditioning for a new Broadway musical. So in A Chorus Line there’s the multi-sided and delicate acting challenge of capturing the assortment of dreams, hopes, anxieties, and disappointments of 17 dancers of variable talents, experience, ambitions, specialties. Some of the characters are direct from theatre school, some are rebounding from showbiz rebuffs, or on the lam from assorted family dysfunctions…. What they share is the need, the desperation, to do what they love, to dance.

It may be a period piece. But Guedo’s cast knows something first-hand about being on the brink of something they really really want.

They are the individual faces (or the headshots on resumés, as a brilliant early scene sets forth) of rising to an ill-defined occasion (what does director Zach want?) with, as the cliché goes, 110 per cent effort and pizzaz. Dance harder, smile more, in the service of the compelling contradiction of A Chorus Line, beautifully captured in Guedo’s production: how to be outstanding enough to join an ensemble and not stand out. To fit exactly into the chorus line of Zach’s new musical — in order to do what they love. To dance.

It gives the climactic numbers What I Did For Love and the finale reprise of One their heartbreaking power. Definitely not a singular sensation. And with the graduating actors of Guedo’s cast, on the threshhold of theatre careers, you get to see what passion, hope, fear (and regret, seen in advance ) look like, 50 years after A Chorus Line opened on Broadway. When one of their number falls with potentially career-ending knee damage, the fierce competitors, and even tyrannical Zach (Zakary Matsuba in a terrific performance), show real sympathy and emotional solidarity.

Audiences might see the ensemble, the chorus line, as razzle-dazzle human stage scenery. But they’re individual artists. Their working lives are fragile. Their gigs are high-stakes. But these are people who wouldn’t have it any other way. All for love.

For me it triggered a memory of being in New York one spring and interviewing a couple of Rockettes from here for the Journal, members of that celebrated move-as-one chorus line. They instantly persuaded a genial NYC cop in Times Square to be their prop for photos, and started in on a series of high kicks of the prescribed Rockette angle. They said, matter-of-factly, that they could do this all day long, without breaking a sweat. When it was time for coffee the photographer actually had to tell them to stop.

They were fulfilling an ambition. One had landed a job as the ensemble member whose claim to individuality was wearing a bratwurst on her head in the chorus line number in The Producers. They were both thrilled with their lives, even though they weren’t unaware their careers wouldn’t last.

A Chorus Line, MacEwan University Theatre Arts. Photo supplied

A Chorus Line is brilliantly constructed to take us backstage to see the individuals behind the precisely calibrated anonymity of the line. To comply with Zach’s demands to hear them talking —“O god, I need this job” they sing in the opener I Hope I Get It — they reveal bits and pieces of their backstories, as little kids, as pubescent pre-teens either being stand-ins for their parents or defying them, as struggling wannabes. In I Can Do That, James Allen’s long-legged Mike recalls imitating, and trying to best, his big sister’s dance moves. The worldly street-hardened Sheila (the compellingly big-voiced Layne Labbe) gives up her tough-cookie gambits to reveal she danced to escape girlhood wounds in an awful family. And she admits to the dream of being a prima ballerina (At The Ballet), joined by other audition-ees in a cleverly staged highlight scene.

Under pressure from Zach, Greg (Kohen Foley) tells of his discovery of being gay. Puerto Rican Diana (Gigi Giles) recounts the gruesomely comic story of her terrible experience in high school drama (“they all felt something, But I felt nothing, except the feeling that this bullshit was absurd”). And in an emotional monologue, delivered with heart-tugging reserve by Don Raphael Figueroa, Paul recounts his troubled history as an exploited effeminate kid in Spanish Harlem. Jenn Houle is fun and sassy as impressively pulchritudinous Val, who sings with gusto about the benefits of “tits and ass” enhancement in Dance: Ten, Looks: Three.

In the most overtly comic number, from Avery Neufeld and Jayden Leung pull off the tricky timing, amusingly. And at the heart of A Chorus Line, Cassie, who has a failed romantic history with Zach, has abandoned her solo aspirations and returns, sadder and wiser, to the chorus line because she needs a job. She’s played by Josie Hoffarth, a stunning dancer whose solo is a tangible demo of what Cassie gives up in taming her wild talents to the ensemble.

Under Guedo’s direction, the performances through the whole ensemble, led by Matsuba’s Zach, are vivid and bold, . The singing talents are variable, in truth. The dancing, choreographed by Courtney Arsenault, is a knock-out. Arsenault’s challenge is to capture the struggle of dancer characters of differing expertise, en route to thrilling precision. This is the double-sided drama of the piece, and Arsenault’s contributions are indispensable.

The solos sometimes sometimes have an ensemble context. And it’s captured by Guedo’s stagecraft, and the smart use of dance rehearsal hall mirrors and lighting (designer: Travis Hatt). The rehearsal costumes (designer: Robyn Ayles), which veer from snazzy work-out leotards to shleppy jeans, are an insight into character, social background, individual ambition. And the sound (designer: Brian Raine) in the Triffo is impeccable.

It’s all accompanied by a crack seven-member band led by Shannon Heibert. They know exactly how to negotiate Marvin Hamlisch’s great, showbiz-forward musical theatre score (just try to leave the theatre without humming).

It’s Jim Guedo’s farewell production at MacEwan after 15 years. A landmark show for a landmark era in Edmonton theatre.

REVIEW

A Chorus Line

Theatre: MacEwan University Theatre Arts

Created by: Michael Bennett, Marvin Hamlisch (music), Edward Kleban (lyrics), James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante (book)

Directed by: Jim Guedo

Musical direction: Shannon Hiebert

Choreographer: Courtney Arsenault

Set and lighting: Travis Hatt

Costumes: Robyn Ayles

Where: Triffo Theatre, Allard Hall, 11110 104 Ave.

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: macewan.ca