What I Did For Love
Yes, The Departed opens today. But I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, I'm going to ask what the hell is wrong with New York theatre critics. A Chorus Line, that old war-horse from 1975 has returned and after its opening night I sat down to read the reviews and they're mostly...not so great. Seems many are saying it's too much a copy of the original, but the dancers seem to be acting this time, whereas the original players were living their lives on stage. I beg to differ.
Even when one is playing one's life, if there's an audience while one is doing it, then one is acting. Okay, I didn't see the 1975 cast. By the time I saw it, Tommy Aguilar had taken over as Paul, and Eivin Harum was playing Zach, but it was still the show Michael Bennett had directed. The actors were not playing themselves, they were playing parts set down on the page for them, and they were charged with making those parts come to life. In my mind, that's what they did, just the way Jason Tam and Michael Berresse did in this revival. So for the NY Times critic to say "It doesn't feel fair to the cast members to have them stand in the same poses and the same clothes as their predecessors" seems a trivial point, at best. It may not be fair, but it's what is required in this particular show. Would this critic have preferred a radical rethinking of the piece, as we recently witnessed for Sweeney Todd? Would he like the dancers to play their own instruments as they tell us the tales of how they were sexually abused in 42nd Street theatres, or watched indifferent parents go about their separate lives?
This show is what it is: a moment in time when one director (Michael Bennett) had the thought to dig inside the minds of his cast and share all that he found with an audience. I mean, really, is any audition actually like the one we witness on stage; where the director forces each job applicant to reveal embarrassing, humiliating, personal events from their past to show how unique and individual they are in the hope of attaining a chance to blend into a chorus line of unknowns behind some unnamed star? Um, no. Michael Bennett just thought it would be neat for an audience to see what dancers go through in their lives on the way to kicking up their heels on the Great White Way.
So this production is the same as it was in 1975, with replicated costumes, lighting and choreography. Sometimes revivals do that - they show you what all the fuss was about for the original audiences. And sometimes Coriolanus is performed in Matrix-like black leather jackets with Christopher Walken spewing Shakespeare's lines to a percussive accompaniment. Both kinds of revival are valid and both can be illuminating. In the case of the new Chorus Line, its illumination is on the validity of the rabid success of the original. We see 16 years later, why this little show about dancers is One Singular Sensation.
Also one singular sensation is Matt Damon. Although none of his movies has been remade or revived yet, he has taken a second look at some of his roles. In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne uncovers more painful memories and attempts to atone for what he sees as an immoral past. In Ocean's Twelve, Linus Caldwell is still trying to keep up with the professional thieves, doing his best to impress them even as his mother breaks them all out of prison. Perhaps it's some measure of Matt's success in these roles that both of these franchises will be placing a third product into the market place before too long. Perhaps some would like to see what happened to Will Hunting after he drives away from the only world he knew, or if Rudy Baylor and Kelly Riker made a future for themselves after he won his landmark court case. But please, Matt, don't revisit Gerry,
whatever you do. Two hours of wandering around in the desert is plenty. Even another five minutes of marching through gravelly-sounding sand could be enough to put me over the edge. God knows I think the world of you, Matt, but that film was a chore for me, even though whispering your name in my quieter moments is What I Did For Love.
Even when one is playing one's life, if there's an audience while one is doing it, then one is acting. Okay, I didn't see the 1975 cast. By the time I saw it, Tommy Aguilar had taken over as Paul, and Eivin Harum was playing Zach, but it was still the show Michael Bennett had directed. The actors were not playing themselves, they were playing parts set down on the page for them, and they were charged with making those parts come to life. In my mind, that's what they did, just the way Jason Tam and Michael Berresse did in this revival. So for the NY Times critic to say "It doesn't feel fair to the cast members to have them stand in the same poses and the same clothes as their predecessors" seems a trivial point, at best. It may not be fair, but it's what is required in this particular show. Would this critic have preferred a radical rethinking of the piece, as we recently witnessed for Sweeney Todd? Would he like the dancers to play their own instruments as they tell us the tales of how they were sexually abused in 42nd Street theatres, or watched indifferent parents go about their separate lives?
This show is what it is: a moment in time when one director (Michael Bennett) had the thought to dig inside the minds of his cast and share all that he found with an audience. I mean, really, is any audition actually like the one we witness on stage; where the director forces each job applicant to reveal embarrassing, humiliating, personal events from their past to show how unique and individual they are in the hope of attaining a chance to blend into a chorus line of unknowns behind some unnamed star? Um, no. Michael Bennett just thought it would be neat for an audience to see what dancers go through in their lives on the way to kicking up their heels on the Great White Way.
So this production is the same as it was in 1975, with replicated costumes, lighting and choreography. Sometimes revivals do that - they show you what all the fuss was about for the original audiences. And sometimes Coriolanus is performed in Matrix-like black leather jackets with Christopher Walken spewing Shakespeare's lines to a percussive accompaniment. Both kinds of revival are valid and both can be illuminating. In the case of the new Chorus Line, its illumination is on the validity of the rabid success of the original. We see 16 years later, why this little show about dancers is One Singular Sensation.
Also one singular sensation is Matt Damon. Although none of his movies has been remade or revived yet, he has taken a second look at some of his roles. In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne uncovers more painful memories and attempts to atone for what he sees as an immoral past. In Ocean's Twelve, Linus Caldwell is still trying to keep up with the professional thieves, doing his best to impress them even as his mother breaks them all out of prison. Perhaps it's some measure of Matt's success in these roles that both of these franchises will be placing a third product into the market place before too long. Perhaps some would like to see what happened to Will Hunting after he drives away from the only world he knew, or if Rudy Baylor and Kelly Riker made a future for themselves after he won his landmark court case. But please, Matt, don't revisit Gerry,
whatever you do. Two hours of wandering around in the desert is plenty. Even another five minutes of marching through gravelly-sounding sand could be enough to put me over the edge. God knows I think the world of you, Matt, but that film was a chore for me, even though whispering your name in my quieter moments is What I Did For Love.
posted by Sam at 5:18 AM
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