Arts & Enteltainment

One Singular Sensation

Interest in a Tony Award-winning musical is gaining fresh attention

Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News

F

ans who've been wishing to
see, hear and read more about
the musical theater smash hit
A Chorus Line can turn to a Broadway
revival; a local production by Royal Oak-
based Stagecrafters; a re-release of the
cast album, with additional material; and
a new edition of the book On the Line:
The Creation of A Chorus Line (Limelight
Editions; $20), by Robert Viagas, Baayork
Lee and Thommie Walsh.
While the Royal Oak cast presents its
version May 25-June 17, fans of the long-
running show can get a behind-the-scenes
look through the text, which chronicles
the development of the musical, presents a
new preface and reveals what happened to
the original cast since A Chorus Line was
first staged in 1975.
The show — which takes audiences
through the auditioning process and the
tensions before a show opens — had a
unique beginning; it was based on the
actual experiences of the dancers, which

made its development very personal for
the creative team: Michael Bennett, who
conceived and originally directed and cho-
reographed the musical; James Kirkwood
and Nicholas Dante, who wrote the script;
Marvin Hamlisch, who composed the
music; and Edward Kleban, who was the
lyricist. (Bennett, Hamlisch and Kleban
were the Jewish members of the creative
team.)
"A Chorus Line started as a project for
dancers wanting to create work for them-
selves:' explains Viagas, program director
of an upcoming Web site that will offer
show music and theater news.
"Things were very different in the early
1970s, the time when they were putting
this together. Broadway seemed to be in
decline, and there were empty theaters.
"The show helped turn Broadway
around. It gave employment to dancers
and gave people the sense that you could
still have a big hit on Broadway. We've
come to see four or five big hits every
season.
The book profiles the creative team as
well as the original cast members, includ-

ing Lee and Walsh.
Lee went on to
choreograph the
revival.
"The original idea
of A Chorus Line
was that everyone
involved was going
to be equal, and we
wanted the book
to go back to that
original concept of
what the project was
going to be," Viagas
Stagecrafters mounts a production of A Chorus Line May 25-
explains. "The nar-
June 17 in Royal Oak.
rative is constantly
shifting because we wanted to make sure
and that's in the show," Viagas says of the
the story was told by each person."
late entertainer, who died in a car accident.
The sections about Michel Stuart
"He loved being a dancer, but his desire
was to be a producer. He was one of the
(Michel Joseph Kleinman) reference both
his Jewish background and gay orienta-
co-producers of Nine, which won a Tony
Award."
tion, portrayed in the latter part of the
musical.
Stuart, whose parents were Holocaust
Stuart took the role of Greg, the part
survivors, was enthusiastic about A Chorus
Line from the beginning and appreciated
being portrayed by Eric Kent Franz in the
Stagecrafters' production.
all the attention it brought from audiences.
"Michel Stuart had great aspirations,
"We were loved and adored by every-

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Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

Shelly Tribute

Is there a more bittersweet story
411 than that of the late actress-writer-
director Adrienne Shelly? She was
born in 1966 as Adrienne Levine
into a Jewish
household on Long
Island, N.Y. Taking
her father's first
name, Shelly, as her
stage name, she
began acting pro-
Adrienne
fessionally in 1989.
Shelly
While she didn't
achieve great suc-
cess, she acted steadily, mostly
in indie films, and in TV roles.
Meanwhile, she honed her skills as
a screenwriter and, in 1997, got the
chance to direct a small indie film
of her own.
In 2002, she married Jewish
businessman Andy Ostroy. Shelly
became pregnant in 2003, and her
pregnancy inspired thoughts about
how the birth of a child completely

124

May 24 • 2007

changes a woman's life.
She then wrote a screenplay
about a Southern diner waitress
who gets pregnant by her mean and
crude husband – a man she despis-
es – and bakes pies as therapy.
The comedy-drama Waitress,
Shelly's third effort as writer-direc-
tor, was filmed in early 2006. Shelly
plays a small part, as another wait-
ress in the diner, and her daughter,
Sophie Ostroy, now 3, appears in a
cameo role.
Keri Russell has the film's lead
role, with a great supporting cast
including Cheryl Hines, Jeremy
Sisto, and Andy Griffith.
On Nov.1, 2006, Shelly was found
hanging from the shower bar in the
bathroom of an apartment she used
as an office. Early reports said it
was suicide, but eventually a con-
struction worker confessed that he
had killed Shelly following an.argu-
ment about construction noise and
hung her body on the bar to fake
suicide.
Waitress got great reviews at the
2007 Sundance Film Festival and

was picked up for national distribu-
tion. It opened in New York and Los
Angeles to glowing reviews earlier
this month and comes to the Main
Art Theatre in Royal Oak this Friday,
May 25.
Andy Ostroy has established
the Adrienne Shelly Foundation to
award film-school scholarships to
women filmmakers. Fox Searchlight
Films and Cover Girl have made
generous contributions to the foun-
dation.

TV Tidbits

Damon Lindelof, co-creator of
ABC's Lost, says the program will
end at the conclusion of the 2009-
10 TV season.
Viewers, often con-
fused or annoyed
by the twists in
Lost plots now know
that everything will
be resolved over
Damon
the course of the
Lindelof
next three seasons.
Lindelof says, "We're really excited
that we get to write the words 'The

End.' We get to answer questions
and show the audience what this
is all about, what the island is, why
these people came there, etc."
NBC has added the series Life
to its fall 2007 lineup. The show
is about a police detective who
returns to the force after being
wrongly imprisoned. Appearing in
supporting roles
are Adam Arkin
(Chicago Hope) and
Robin Weigert, who
played Calamity
Jane on HBO's
Deadwood.
Robin Weigert
The Jerusalem
Post reports that
Chilean-born actress Cote de Pablo,
who co-stars as Mossad agent Ziva
David on the CBS series NCIS,
arrived in Israel on May 8 as a
guest of the Israel tourism industry.
An Israel tourism commissioner
said, "We wanted [her] to see the
real Israel so that she can further
enrich her superb TV portrayal of
an Israeli woman on NCIS."
The actress' tour schedule includ-