My Sunday Feeling

"A Chorus Line" is the current production of the Arkansas Repertory Theater. I attended a performance of the old warhorse (that's showbiz talk for a show that is guaranteed to make you a zillion dollars anytime the curtain goes up) one night last week. This was probably the third time I have seen ACL. Let me be clear about something. I absolutely hate this show. Always have. I doubt that I would have gone to see it last week except that the Rep was good enough to let a charity I support use what was basically a dress rehearsal for a fundraiser.

I never understood why ACL was such a big deal. It has no plot. Or not much of one: 17 dancers are auditioning for 8 spots in the chorus line of a major Broadway musical. Along the way, certain of the dancers tell about their lives. They dance. They sing. They endure the withering criticisms of the director conducting the audition. All but 8 are cut. Curtain.

Really. That's about it.

I guess I don't like it because the characters are strictly cartoon figures. You have a fiery Latino. You have your vamp. You have your stereotypical gay types, the most dignified of which happens to be a drag queen. You have a washed up hoofer making one last try. You have the small town types who left the country for the big city and are DETERMINED TO MAKE IT NO MATTER WHAT. Pretty thin stuff.

I don't like ACL because the music isn't very good. The dialogue isn't much better. I had managed to forget that the book has at least 2 of the male characters giving these long gay coming-of-age stories. Maybe that was pretty daring in 1975. It is merely tedious in 2006. Not offensive in the slightest. Just tedious. And besides, didn't lesbians exist in 1975? Maybe the authors didn't put any lesbian characters in the show because they felt that your average gay woman probably wouldn't make such a big honking deal about her sexual orientation in front of a bunch of strangers.

Maybe I don't like ACL because back in another life, I used to do musical theatre. Not that I much liked it. I did theater for one reason and one reason only: to meet women. And it worked. I typically was one of the few straight guys in any of the shows I was in. Indeed, I was involved for many moons with a woman who worked at the Rep and I used to hang out over there. As a result, I grew weary of theater people. The worst of that lot tend to be highly neurotic and beyond high maintenance. Worse than singers even. As I watched ACL the other night, I kept thinking, "I just don't like these people." I typically won't spend 2 hours with people I dislike unless I am in court.

Also, I don't like ACL because it exalts the cruelty of "Zack" the director. Now this kind of meanness really exists in the theatre. I just didn't like being reminded of it. In fact, it occurs to me that maybe ACL-bad as it is- resonates to this day because it would appear that an entire generation of viewers and voters are transfixed by the vicious judges of "American Idol." The American Idol people are punks. They are dealing with pseudo-amateurs that are willing to put up with the almost certain prospect of exquisite humiliation in hopes that they might be "stars." Indeed, in retrospect, "Zack" is Albert Schweitzer compared to Simon Cowell.

Finally, and returning again to the topic of human degradation, I dislike ACL because it spawned "Flashdance" and "All That Jazz" which made wearing leg warmers in the grocery store fashionable. This was a terrible thing. For these reasons alone I am glad that the eighties are long gone.

Some things don't change. I still hate ACL If you want to see a real musical about plucky and determined young New Yorkers, go rent West Side Story. You want to see how cutthroat humiliation obtains in professional theatre go see A Chorus Line.

Don't go see "Rent" either.