ON THE LINE: The Creation of A Chorus Line

by Robert; Thommie Walsh & Baayork Lee Viagas ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1990

Still another in the chorus line of books about A Chorus Line, this one an oral report from the line itself--and the most moving. A Chorus Line is the most successful Broadway musical ever. The most recent books about it (all 1989) include Kevin Kelly's life of Michael Bennett, One Singular Sensation; Ken Mandelbaum's A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett; and, peripherally, the show's late coauthor James Kirkwood's Diary of a Mad Playwright. Of them all, the new one best gets into the innards of the show and comes from the mouths of the original cast. It also least belabors the late Bennett for his difficult ego and drug problems--though the inspired and manipulative dancer/choreographer/director does not get off scot-free. A Chorus Line grew first from confessional tapes made by the cast before anything about the show's format could be seen. Its final shaping into a dramatic musical with more book than dance took place at Joe Papp's Public Theater, where the show shook down to over four hours of class-A material, half of which had to be cut. The final dance number, with everyone recostumed in glitz and top hat and joining in a seemingly endless heart-tugging Rockettes kick, arose only in the last weeks (the end had been done with cast members fading one by one into darkness). No cast member escaped the can-opener effect of the show exposing his most private being, although when the supertremendous first reviews moved the show uptown to the big Schubert theater from the tonsil-revealing Public Theater, the show changed character, and cast members found themselves playing and projecting ""themselves"" rather than being themselves as before. The power of the show's previews is well suggested here, though that original intimacy is gone forever. And the authors' oral history format really delivers--so much so that one feels pulled once more to go up to the Schubert for another boost of adrenaline and cleaning of the eyes.

Pub Date: March 21, 1990

ISBN: 0879103361

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION