This wonderful revival of A Chorus Line has not exactly “been reimagined for its first major production on a thrust stage” as we were told it would be. Rather, Canada’s superb director/choreographer Donna Feore has made some additions and changed only an occasional emphasis, and truly re-choreographed only parts of a few dances. Her challenge and her longtime aspiration was to present her loving immersion into this show and combine it with her dedication to this world-famous stage. And as a critic who has seen the original production and at least eight others, thousands of miles apart, I can tell you that she has succeeded thrillingly. [Background: Donna Feore's revival of Fiddler On the Roof was actually the most perfect staging of a musical that I have ever seen. Stratford's Festival Theatre has been imitated by subsequently built stages in at least three countries.] A Chorus Line is, of course, an unparalleled phenomenon. For decades, it played all over the world and maintained astoundingly disciplined artistic standards in all its tightly supervised official national touring companies. Broadway gypsies referred to it as a show demanding young performers. The production company sent scouts to visit and supervise touring national companies in the hinterlands so that they had to dance full-out even when rehearsing or breaking in a cast replacement plus matinee and evening performances, eight in a week. Inexplicably, the only undisciplined performances I ever saw from professional versions of this show were on Broadway in later years, where somehow the producers let some performers get sloppy. But the show is about people who can actually “cut” the disciplined routine and show the audience what a singer/dancer/actor can do. And peculiarly, that opportunity has excited audiences even in rare performances within a high school production where, in general, there wasn’t anyone who could really dance. Where it works, A Chorus Line has a direct effect on an audience that is not really rivaled by any other musical that I know of. We begin with a mob of anxious young people: (“I Hope I Get It”). Some applicants amusingly show off and try to get attention by doing more multiple turns or higher jumps than are required. The choreographer/director, Zach, asks them to talk about themselves. But their initial group dancing, still not unified, is an exciting revelation to the audience that all these performers can really act, sing, and dance. Mike recalls his boyish excitement when he watched dancers and realized “I Can Do That.” Matt Alfano performs the number winningly here, clearly enjoying his show-off virtuosity. Then four others show off briefly and comically. Sheila (a commanding Ayrin Mackie) ends a sad confessional reminiscence with the wistful “At the Ballet,” and then three others join in. How many young dancers and awkward youngsters began with a yearning escapism, noting that “Everything Was Beautiful at the Ballet”? Diana offers a deadly account [“Nothing”] of a pretentious teacher who tried to make his acting students feel what he told them to. Kristine shows us that she can’t sing, with her endlessly solicitous husband supporting her, in “Sing.” And the company performs in what looks mostly like true unison in “One” -- bringing the house down with its “Singular Sensation.” Look! They’re all really good enough to be in a Broadway chorus line! Juan Chioran, a very experienced singer/dancer/actor in a wide repertory of theater, here plays Zach looking surprisingly young and unsurprisingly virile and commanding. His embracing Conor Scully’s movingly upset, injured, and weeping young Paul is as natural and right as his perfectly demonstrating steps to the others and even his keeping up with all the high-kicking dancers in the finale. He never calls attention to himself but is always authentic. Zach’s big scene with his former love, Cassie, sets up Dayna Tietzen’s Cassie for her big song and dance number, “The Music and the Mirror.” I don’t agree with those who found Donna Feore’s choreography for this dance disappointing. I think it an improvement on Bennett’s original choreography in that it is correctly not virtuosic but is a more self-revealing, impressive personal statement than the original. Any problem may be a reflection that Dayna Tietzen, who is fine in the role, is most talented as a singer, secondarily as an actress, and not as strong as a dancer. There’s also a showy tap number; tap dancing dominated musicals for a time, and, I’m told, is coming back to newer music and styles. The downside of these performers’ lives is demonstrated especially by the already-mentioned injured Paul, a gay outcast to his conservative Puerto Rican family, and Val’s song of damning evaluation, “Dance Ten, Looks Three.” But dazzling little Julia McLellen then almost steals the show as the repaired Val, who celebrates her plastic surgery and hard-won new body and appearance owing to “Tits and Ass”). And late in the confessions, with other auditioners joining in, Paul’s Puerto Rican friend Diana Morales, sings of the sad sacrifices in her life, and is joined by several sympathetic others. Cynthia Smithers is commanding and memorable singing “What I did For Love.” At the end, the whole cast returns in the golden suits and hats that aren’t much different from the originals, and they spread out over the Festival Theatre’s huge octagonal thrust stage in the famed finale, high-kicking in perfect unison, no one dancer calling attention to himself or herself, but all of them seeming somehow larger than life. The choreography changes only in the final bows which move, spotlit, upstage and down the steps for curtain calls. If Stratford wants to send this production out across Canada or anywhere else, the stage set-ups may present problems, but the audiences will adore it.
