A Chorus Line, Edinburgh review: 'unforgettable'

(L-R) Redmand Rance (Mike Costa), Chloe Saunders (Val Clarke) and Rachel Jayne Picar (Connie Wong) in A Chorus Line (L-R) Redmand Rance (Mike Costa), Chloe Saunders (Val Clarke) and Rachel Jayne Picar (Connie Wong) in A Chorus Line
(L-R) Redmand Rance (Mike Costa), Chloe Saunders (Val Clarke) and Rachel Jayne Picar (Connie Wong) in A Chorus Line | Marc Brenner
It’s almost five decades since the first performance of A Chorus Line, yet in Nikolai Foster’s high-energy revival it still makes for a fierce and haunting metaphor for our harsh economic system, writes Joyce McMillan

A Chorus Line, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★★

Armour: A Herstory Of The Scottish Bard, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★

Hide Ad

With two major receiving theatres in the city - the 1,900-seat Festival Theatre, and the 3,000-seat Playhouse - big UK touring productions of musicals come and go in Edinburgh all the time, often reappearing every couple of years.

Hide Ad

It’s rare, though, to encounter one that blazes with such a special energy as Nikolai Foster’s 2021 Leicester Curve production of A Chorus Line, playing at the Festival Theatre this week. Set in 1970s New York, Michael Bennett and Marvin Hamlisch’s 1975 musical, with lyrics by Edward Kleban, famously follows a group of 17 dancers through a gruelling audition day for a new Broadway musical.

Only eight of them will be chosen, although they all desperately need the work; and so the story of A Chorus Line instantly springs to life as both a compelling showbiz drama in itself, and - almost 50 years on - as a fierce and haunting metaphor for an economic system that seems ever more inclined to view human beings as disposable, casual workers to be thrown on the social and economic scrapheap as soon as they cease to be useful.

It’s therefore perhaps not surprising that Nikolai Foster’s brilliantly chosen company throw themselves with extraordinary energy and passion into a show that - over 110 breathless minutes without an interval - allows each dancer space to tell his or her story; and also to explore why, despite the precarity of their work, and the inevitable shortness of their professional lives, they continue to do what they do.

The same intensity vibrates through Hamlisch’s songs, notably the big anthem What I Did For Love, and the iconic chorus number One; and it is also reflected in the physical presence of the production, with its fabulous, dramatic lighting by Howard Hudson, its superb on-stage band, and its unforgettable, glitter-drenched closing reprise of One, in which the hard-working dancers are finally showered with gold.

The wonderful Festival Theatre can rarely have looked more magical than it does for this show, with its huge stage space stripped bare and soaring magnificently above the dancers, as they rehearse and sweat and dance again. And with Adam Cooper and Carly Mercedes Dyer acting up a storm as director Zach and his former lover Cassie, this mighty show holds the audience in thrall from start to finish; and is greeted, at the end, with the roar of acclaim that Nikolai Foster’s gifted company so richly deserves.

Hilary Maclean and Irene Allan in Armour Hilary Maclean and Irene Allan in Armour
Hilary Maclean and Irene Allan in Armour | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Also greeted with a heartfelt ovation, this week, was writer and composer Shonagh Murray’s new Play, Pie and Pint show Armour. Subtitled A Herstory of the Scottish Bard, Armour tells the tale of the poet’s wife, Jean Armour Burns, as seen through the eyes of her young granddaughter, Sarah; and imagines a time, many years after Robert Burns’s death, when Jean - who outlived her husband by almost 40 years - has the strange experience of meeting Nancy Maclehose, Burns’s great Edinburgh love, and getting to know her a little.

The show therefore emerges as a female meditation on Burns and his work that is somehow both intensely critical and deeply affectionate; and as something more than that, a play with songs that borrows from Burns, but also develops a strong lyrical voice of its own, as the three women sing their way to a deeper understanding of the loves and losses they have experienced.

Hide Ad

Tom Cooper’s fine cast features Irene Allan as Jean, Hilary Maclean as Nancy, and a superb Karen Fishwick as Sarah; and it delivers an extraordinarily rich and entertaining hour of lunchtime entertainment, now set to travel on to the Traverse in Edinburgh, and also to Ayr, Paisley and Johnstone.

Hide Ad

A Chorus Line is at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until 28 September. Armour is at Oran Mor, Glasgow until 28 September; the Traverse, Edinburgh, 1-5 October; the Gaiety Theatre, Ayr 10-12 October; Paisley Town Hall 15-16 October; and Johnstone Town Hall 17-18 October.

Related topics:

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.