Skyrocketing emotions dominate Merry-Go-Round’s mounting of A Chorus Line’s dance drama

Of the three shows from the 20th century that really transformed the medium, including Show Boat and Oklahoma!, only A Chorus Line can still conjure the inexplicable beauty of its first production. It wears its 34 years well, even though there is probably not a single member of the current cast who can identify unaided pop references to Troy Donohue or Anna May Wong. A Chorus Line was postmodern before we realized commercial entertainment would be so aesthetically hip. In this splendid production at Auburn’s Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, the thing keeps reinventing itself before our very eyes.

This is not to say that A Chorus Line does not bear the heavy weight of familiarity. No one in 2009 enters the theater without knowing the whole story of how it was created out of interviews very much like what we see on stage. Everyone in Auburn knows that the late Thommie Walsh was the original Bobby and that his crack about suicide in Buffalo being redundant was made about, um, another upstate city. Everyone knows that every character, despite being rooted in actuality, veers toward type, and we know most of the words of every song, especially, the ultra-saucy, “Dance: Ten; Looks, Three.” But when the line comes together in the last act, all that personal anxiety and insecurity welded together in perfect cohesion, we still can hardly believe it.

MGR artistic director Ed Sayles reputedly auditioned more than 2,000 candidates for the 19 roles, a wider net than original director-choreographer Michael Bennett cast for the 1975 production. And we can see the effects. As with great opera, we can remember a dozen other performers in the same roles, and the current cast has to exceed what we expect. They do. 

Diana (Megan Jimenez) has two of the biggest numbers, the first act’s “Nothing,” about the comic inability to summon up manufactured emotion in a method acting class, and the plangent “What I Did For Love,” in some ways the anthem of the whole. Contrasting excellence, first witty then heartfelt.

The central narrative, which we learn only gradually, is about the former relationship between the often brusque Zach (Richard B. Watson) and the over-the-hill star Cassie (Elizabeth Earley). Cassie wears scarlet, and Zach keeps bullying and humiliating her, and so even that rare person who has never seen the show before knows something’s coming. For 75 percent of the show we’re only getting Zach’s offstage voice, which Watson nicely modulates. He’s going to make some brutal decisions, but Watson’s Zach keeps signaling his concern for the rejected and also that he’s worth recovering himself. 

Earley’s Cassie is extraordinarily vulnerable, while nonetheless strong enough to shoulder all the disappointment she’s taken. Her big dance solo, “The Music and the Mirror,” is all that a choreographer-turned-playwright like Bennett could ask for: a heart-wrenching self-expression that reveals character and drives plot.

What follows is, if anything, even better. In the company number “One” Zach and Cassie are quarreling in front of all the dancers, where we learn that there are accusations on both sides, and maybe their affair was really choked off by misunderstanding. While there is more fire in this exchange than any other part of A Chorus Line, that’s not what makes it hair-raising. In a capsule of what makes the chorus the chorus, everyone else is practicing a routine, affecting to be listening. With Solomon Weisbard’s spooky lighting, evocative of an Erté print, they still define the scene from which they are withdrawing. As things are happening simultaneously, we can never spell out what this is supposed to be, but we see that the work of the chorus overrides the deeply felt human conflicts, and that Zach and Carrie will be absorbed into it.

All the players with many lines or solos put individualizing touches on familiar characters, none more than local boy Todd Lattimore in Thommie Walsh’s role as Bobby. The others cannot be jealous when Lattimore gets a huge but justified ovation at the curtain. 

Flame-haired and Juno-esque, Kate Marilley’s Sheila, the seen-it-all cynic, commands the eye from the moment she enters the stage, never more than her trio, “At the Ballet,” with Bebe (Anne Marie Vick) and Maggie (Synthia Link). Bosomy, gorgeous Cameron McLendon as Val never got a “Looks: Three” evaluation in her life, but her “T’n’A” number is supposed to stop the show, which it does.

It takes skill to show that you don’t have any, which is what Andrea Davey does as doting wife Kristine, who can’t find the pitch in the “Sing” duet with husband Al (Ralph Meitzler). Matthew Rickard plays the tragic Paul, wounded by the shame of life’s choices before he turns his ankle and leaves the company. Jennifer Long, as statuesque Judy, becomes the ditz with commanding ability. Adam Lendermon, as haughty Greg, tells us how he accommodates unwanted erections. And Neil Totton as Richie brings a welcome touch of Africa to a show that’s mostly about white music.

Marvin Hamlisch’s score, not only his best, is his prime contribution to be listed among Broadway greats. Mark Goodman’s excellent musical direction, with fully 10 players in this pull-out-the-stops production, gives justification to MGR’s claim to be “Broadway in the Finger Lakes.” In what has been a recession-defying summer for the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, A Chorus Line has been the top hit. What few tickets are left won’t last long.       

This production runs through Saturday, Sept. 5. See Times Table for information.