Get in line for 'Chorus Line'

The actors mill around the foyer in their dance shoes, forming nervous cliques. "Are you here for the audition?" they ask each other archly. "How many years have you done ballet?" Some of them are stretching; all are dressed to dance.

Many theatergoers were taken by the illusion: "How can they have an audition and a play at the same time?" someone muttered.

"A Chorus Line" is in fact a protracted audition. Long before American Idol and a smattering of other reality TV shows claimed to show viewers the "real" path to stardom, this play, originally directed by Michael Bennett in 1975, brought audiences into a rehearsal studio where a pack of young hopefuls are being whittled down into a Broadway chorus line.

This joint production of Theatre Intime and the Princeton University Players has brought together many of Princeton's best stage talents in singing, dance and acting.

"It's a really hard play to redo outside a Broadway atmosphere because you need a lot of really talented people," said Julie Bruno '07, a cast member.

"A Chorus Line" is written so that all the dozen or so characters who make the first cut each have a few minutes in the spotlight.

Without exception, their performances are dazzling and high-energy. A poignant and elegantly staged ballet, a hilarious monologue about high school drama classes and the signature "Tits and Ass" number are all gems.

Directors Branden Jacobs-Jenkins '06 and Ashley Soloff '07 have attended to every detail. The characters have a great rapport, and physical comedy is used liberally.

A sense of self-conscious realism pervades the show and immediately draws viewers in. The actors enter through the theater doors from the foyer where the audience has just seen them warming up.

The director (Aaron Spolin '08), who reminds one of Michael Douglas with his hawkish glare and impatient commands, paces through the front row of the house and walks up the aisle to eventually ensconce himself in the balcony next to the light booth.

The choreography leaps off Theatre Intime's undersized stage, which has been left elegantly bare. In another triumph, the well-rehearsed dance moves are subtly executed to seem like the clumsy guesswork of actors who have just learned a routine.

The polished finale-cum-curtain call, "One," forms a striking contrast and showcases the hard work of the team of choreographers: Natasha Kalimada '07, Diana Campbell '06, Nadia Ben-Youssef '06, Amanda Ameer (an employee of McCarter Theater) and Kelly Sortino '03.

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However, to the distaste of some, this is musical theater on truth serum. The lyrics disclose every thought in a character's head and the book handles character development poorly. For example, Paul, played by Rob Walsh '07, declares "I don't like to talk about myself" and then delivers a monologue to the effect of "I was repeatedly molested by two men in the front row at the movies before becoming a drag performer and being disowned by my parents."

This pattern of refusing to talk followed by an admission of things which one would never talk about becomes cloying when we see it a dozen times.

The play is dated by its over-the-top full disclosure. Even though the audience is drawn in at the beginning, the melodrama of every story steadily weakens the connection.

Sappiness reaches its climax when the director asks "What will do you when you can't dance anymore?" and each of the hoofers replies. Not only is such a scene unthinkable at a real audition, but not a single one of the responses rises above the banal. We, products of the Age of Reality TV, somehow expect better — we've certainly seen better since 1975.

Though "Chorus Line" is slated to reappear on Broadway in 2006, the play is a self-defeating proposition: the multiple competing storylines all blending together, seem to fit too perfectly into a saccharine assertion that each one of us is special. However, this cast does a sterling job with the material and stages some deeply moving vignettes. Every actor there deserves to get the part.

"A Chorus Line" will continue to run today, tomorrow and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Theatre Intime.