TT: Seventeen sensations

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review an outstanding Florida revival of A Chorus Line. Here’s an excerpt.
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What was the most influential musical of the ’70s? If you take Stephen Sondheim’s shows out of contention, many theatergoers would likely opt for “Chicago” or “A Chorus Line,” and convincing cases can be made for either choice. Both opened on Broadway in 1975 and were long-running hits, and both have since been successfully revived. Both are anti-naturalistic “presentational” shows in which the characters break through the imaginary “fourth wall” and engage directly with the audience, although “A Chorus Line” blurs this distinction by placing the fictional “director” in the auditorium and having the performers speak and sing to him. Above all, both were frank about sex in a way that was daring four decades ago, at least in the crowd-pleasing field of musical comedy.
The 1996 revival of “Chicago” is still running–it is, in fact, the longest-running revival in the history of Broadway–but “A Chorus Line” hasn’t been seen there since 2008. Most regional companies find it too choreographically challenging to mount, and those that dare to give it a go usually strive to reproduce Michael Bennett’s original production as exactly as possible. (So did the Broadway revival, which was a near-facsimile.) Not having seen it for eight years, I thought it would be interesting to catch a performance by the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, one of south Florida’s most successful companies, and find out how it holds up. It’s no surprise that “A Chorus Line” still works, despite palpable flaws that have grown more glaring since 1975. The bigger, better news is that Maltz Jupiter is giving it a very well-danced and unusually well-acted production, one that plays down the show’s weaknesses while maximizing its considerable strengths….
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Read the whole thing here.
The original cast of A Chorus Line performs “I Hope I Get It” on the 1976 Tony Awards telecast: