A Chorus Line Reviews
Washington Post- Highly Recommended
"...Signature Theatre has revived the Pulitzer Prize-winning show that sprang from the mind of director-choreographer Michael Bennett and the bruised hearts of Broadway dancers whose experiences the show catalogues. On the company's compact main stage, the sounds of a 10-member orchestra reverberating in a hall seating 275, the musical's own heart feels bigger, somehow. In these closer quarters, too, the faces beaming so resiliently out of those glossies seem in reality to be more anxious, more conflicted, less certain about the future."
DC Theater Arts- Highly Recommended
"...High kick on down to Arlington's Signature Theatre to see their new production of the iconic story that takes you behind the glamour and glitz of a Broadway show to the heartbreak, hard work, and sacrifice that propels the people behind the shows we love to watch. It's worth the trip to see what they do for love."
MetroWeekly- Highly Recommended
"...Less is more in Matthew Gardiner's simply terrific production of the quintessential Broadway musical about Broadway musicals, A Chorus Line. Gardiner plants the show's lead interlocutor Zach (Matthew Risch) amidst the audience at Signature Theatre, just where a musical director might sit as he or she peers godlike from the darkness at a line of performers auditioning onstage. Thus, we're all party to Zach's gloriously grueling process of demanding that the seventeen assembled actor-dancers - or, are they dancer-actors? - bare their talents and weaknesses for the sake of pleasing him enough to get hired for the potentially career-making show he's casting."
MD Theatre Guide- Highly Recommended
"...This is a lovely, shimmering, razzmatazz of a show. The songs are just as affecting as ever (with perhaps the exception of "Sing!" which made me wonder why a non-singer would audition for a show that requires both singing and dancing), the dancing sublime (these dancers don't turn on a dime-they turn on the pointy edge of an Xacto knife), and the story still full of hope and wonder and sadness and grit. It's a lovely way to spend an evening."
DCTheatreScene- Recommended
"...Signature Theatre's A Chorus Line digs deeper into the psyches of the struggling young performers than any production I've ever seen, stripping the characters bare before the audience (not literally) in a manner so disarming, you forget you're watching a musical. Staged in Signature's self-described "intimate" MAX theater, Director Matthew Gardiner and choreographer Denis Jones blur the line between actors and audience. The dance "line" on which the actors gather is set back only the slightest distance from the lip of the stage, the dancers almost looming out over the audience. Zach sits hunched over a small desk, staged smack in the middle of the audience itself, causing the first few rows to crane their necks back and forth to be sure not to miss anything."
BroadwayWorld- Recommended
"...Of all the performances my favorite would have to be Samantha Marisol Gershman as Diana Morales. Her performance of "Nothing' where she recants her adventures in Mr. Karp's acting class is a definite highlight. Later on, her lead vocal on "What I Did for Love" drives the point home that dancers are a rare breed of performer."