On my thirteenth birthday (it might’ve been my fourteenth) my girlfriend at the time bought me “B’Way: The American Musical” CD; a compilation of songs from monumental musicals starting with the theme from Oklahoma! spanning to what was then the very new and revolutionary “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. It was jam packed with classics including Ethel Merman’s brassy rendition of “Anything Goes”, “Don’t For Me Argentina”, “Memory”, and “Good Morning Baltimore”. It was every adolescent-theatre-nerd’s dream. That night, I popped the CD into my navy blue walkman, slipped on my old school headphones, and listened to the entire album. Track 16 was one of the strangest songs I had ever heard; people talking over each other, speaking dance moves in broken patterns over dreamlike music. I turned over the CD case to find the name of the song. It was, you guessed it, “One” from the original cast recording of A Chorus Line.
Flash forward a few years and chubby teenage Brian is power walking to the back of the music section at Border’s (remember that place?) to buy the The New Cast Recording of A Chorus Line which had just re-opened on Broadway. Flash forward another year (and hundreds of car rides with Mom driving while I was scream singing Maggie’s crescendo in “At The Ballet”), and I’m sitting at the Schoenfield Theatre in New York with my high school choir mates, about to watch what had become one of my absolute favorite musicals.
I think the most beautiful thing about A Chorus Line is that you can relate to essentially every single character even if you aren’t a dancer. And, believe me, I am certainly not a dancer. Regardless, it is so easy to get swept into the stories and realize the beauty and complication that is simply growing up and being alive.
Flash forward to today, and I have the beautiful privilege of being a part of this production, along with the even greater privilege of playing Zach. It is magical watching these beautiful stories unfold night after night; re-living those car rides with my mom, singing “Nothing” in the hallways at school with friends, and those nights when I fell asleep listening to “What I Did For Love”.
Thank you to Robin for this role, to Mom for letting me to the soundtrack repeatedly, and to YOU for supporting Metropolis PAC production of A Chorus Line!
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