Full Cast Announced for New Broadway Revival of A Chorus Line
By Robert Simonson
26 Apr 2006
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Deidre Goodwin
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The complete cast for the first-ever Broadway revival of A Chorus Line has been revealed. The production will take possession of Broadway's Schoenfeld Theatre on Sept. 18. Official opening is now Oct. 5.
As previously announced, the cast will be headed by frequent Chicago star Charlotte d’Amboise and The Light in the Piazza’s Michael Berresse.
D'Amboise will play Cassie, the down-on-her-luck dancer created in the original production by Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie. Berresse will play Cassie's former lover Zach, who is now the director of the show for which Cassie has come to audition.
The rest of the ensemble runs as follows:
Ken Alan (as Bobby)
Brad Anderson (Don)
Natalie Cortez (Diana, who sings "Nothing," "What I Did for Love")
Mara Davi (Maggie, "At the Ballet")
Jessica Lee Goldyn (Val, "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three")
Deidre Goodwin (Sheila, "At the Ballet")
Tyler Hanes (Larry)
James T. Lane (Richie, "Gimme the Ball" section of "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love")
Paul McGill (Mark)
Heather Parcells (Judy)
Michael Paternostro (Greg)
Alisan Porter (Bebe, "At the Ballet")
Jeffrey Schecter (Mike, "I Can Do That")
Yuka Takara (Connie)
Jason Tan (Paul)
Chryssie Whitehead (Kristine, "Sing!")
Tony Yazbeck (Al, "Sing!")
Many members of the cast will be making their Broadway debuts in the production.
The show will play a pre-Broadway engagement as San Francisco's Curran Theatre
July 23-Sept. 2.
The revival of A Chorus Line will be directed by Bob Avian, the co-choreographer of the original production, which was helmed by the late Michael Bennett. The design team includes Robin Wagner (sets), Theoni V. Aldredge (costumes), Natasha Katz and Tharon Musser (lighting) and Acme Sound Partners (sound).
A Chorus Line has a book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by the late Edward Kleban, who later became the subject of the show A Class Act.
A Chorus Line began life at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. It is about a collection of Broadway gypsies who tell their stories and reveal their fears as they go through the fraught and trying process of auditioning for the chorus of a new show. It was revolutionary not only for the long workshop process that created the show (and which birthed a workshop ethos which has persisted—for better or worse—in commercial and nonprofit theatre to this day), but for epitomizing the "concept musical," a genre which began with such Sondheim works as Company and Follies and reached its peak in Line.
The cast included such then-unsung performers as Wayne Cilento, Robert LuPone, Priscilla Lopez, Kelly Bishop (then called Carole Bishop) and Donna McKechnie.
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A Chorus Line will be produced by the well known and well-connected entertainment lawyer John Breglio, who represented the musical's director-choreographer-conceiver Michael Bennett while he was alive and still handles his estate. Breglio's many theatre clients include Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public Theater, Stephen Sondheim and Bernadette Peters.
The credit will mark Breglio's Broadway producing debut. "I feel like I've tried to guide and help hundreds of producers over the years," Breglio previously told Playbill.com. "This one was sort of inevitable for me. It's the closest thing to me in my career that I've ever done." Breglio and Bennett joined forces in the early '70s. After A Chorus Line, they formed a producing partnership with choreographer Bob Avian and Susan MacNair called Quadrille Productions, though Breglio eventually returned to his practice.
Also participating in the revival will be the show's surviving creators, including Marvin Hamlisch, designer Robin Wagner and Avian, who was billed as "co-choreographer" in the original production. Avian will direct the new mounting. Wagner will recreate the bare-stage-and-mirrors set that characterized the original.
Also teaming with Avian will be original cast member Baayork Lee, who will assist in recreating Bennett's original staging and choreography.
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