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The Music and the Mirror – A Chorus Line Click here to watch A Chorus Line was one of those shows, like Company, like Hamilton, that changed the direction of the American musical theatre. It’s a show about the theatre, specifically a show about dancers, not star dancers but those hundreds of Broadway and West End hoofers who don their shoes every night and take up their positions in the chorus lines of shows where they often go unnoticed or, at least, unremarked. At its core is a number (by Marvin Hamlisch and Ed Kleban) which brings into focus the art of dancing, how hard dancers have to work, how they have to bring the best they have to the theatre every night, even though nobody is really seeing them, and, above all, why they want to do it. Dancers’ careers are short, they can be ended in a split second by a sudden injury or a pandemic. Right now, this number – The Music and the Mirror - is more poignant than ever. American Dance Machine asked Donna McKechnie (see pic) to recreate the choreography that Michael Bennett and Bob Avian created for her in the original cast of A Chorus Line. Her response has been to teach it to 27 professional Broadway singer/dancers. These performers are dancing for love, for the joy of dancing, filming themselves in their own homes and gardens, in their tiny flats and in the street, disconnected from each other and the music, and still precise, elegant, exacting in their talent and skill. I weep for them because despite everything, they are still dancing. They deserve to dance for us, the audience, and right now they can’t. I wept when I first heard and saw this song performed on the stage in 1975 – it’s hard to watch all that longing – and I wept again today when I saw it with dancers who were not even born then. Metropolitan Opera Nightly Streams: Pavarotti Week Dec 28-Jan 3 www.metopera.org Ignore the bootblack hair and the excess weight and the overdone acting and just remember that Luciano Pavarotti was the greatest operatic tenor of our lifetime and we were lucky to have him. The Met’s Nightly Opera Stream is showing an entire week of Pavarotti’s starring roles from La Boheme with Renata Scotto in 1971 to Elisir d’Amore with Kathleen Battle in 1991. Twenty years of extraordinary vocal artistry and this week is a wonderful opportunity to see some of the legendary performances we may have missed and some we saw and would love to hear again. Just go to the website, scroll down to the opera of your choice, check the date on the schedule and click on that. If you’ve got the right opera on the right date, it’s free for 24 hours following its initial broadcast at 7.30pm NY time. Until you get used to the website it can be a bit of a faff but you’ll soon get used to checking regularly to find your favourites. Mary Said No – New Christmas Carol Click here to watch I have always loved Christmas music, not the soppy songs we hear ad nauseum at this time of the year, but real Christmas music – masses, oratorios, great choral compositions, and, above all, carols. Even sung in a shaky treble by a hopeful small boy at your door, carols can be touching. But a new carol, that’s really something special and two great American songwriters have written one this year which has musical and lyrical depth. Michele Brourman and Amanda McBroom are asking in this lovely carol what you would say if an angel suddenly appeared to you and suggested you give birth to the Son of God. Mary Said No is as much of a story carol as any of the more famous ones but it speaks, not to the birth of Jesus but to the decision that came before it. Sung by Michele Brourman, this new carol is moving and beautiful. It deserves to join the canon of favourite carols. The Night London’s Theatres Went Dark - BBC Click here to watch I’ve been weeping a lot this week – over the death of a friend, over the beauty of a new Christmas carol, over the dancers in A Chorus Line, and over these beautiful photographs of West End theatres, artfully embellished by the photographer Troy David Johnston, who happens to be an out of work dresser in the now interrupted West End production of Wicked. Intrinsic to his vision of our great theatres is a sense of outrage that they are currently uninhabited and dark, epitomising all that is tragic about the absence of art and the danger of a world where entertainment, music and theatre are undervalued and, at this time, missing entirely. These streets should be teeming with people, these buildings thrumming with activity. Thousands of people usually work in these theatres, those you see on the stage, and those you don’t, working just as hard behind the scenes. I weep for these workers, currently unemployed, who love what they do, and who are desperate to be able to do it again. And somehow the stark black and white of these photographs without a soundtrack, the very silence of the images without intrusive music, has an impact which is even more powerful. Sunset Blvd in Concert – The Curve Click here for tickets Dec 22-Jan 9 £20 Ria Jones stars as the silent-screen goddess Norma Desmond, with Danny Mac as the penniless screen writer Joe Gillis in this concert production of Sunset Blvd, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Hollywood musical. Based on Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic film about romance, glamour, obsession and the movies, it was originally staged at the Curve in Leicester in 2017, and reprised here, in a fully costumed but not staged, streamed concert. The production includes most of the original cast who are supported by a 16-piece orchestra. £20 per household. Potted Panto Click here for tickets Two hard-working actors, Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner, slog their way through the conventions of all the standard pantomimes from Jack and the Beanstalk to Cinderella. This show was filmed at the Garrick Theatre before lockdown with a live audience of children who add much-needed reaction to the silliness on stage. This is only suitable for small children who can be persuaded to suspend disbelief. If you can’t bear to deny your children their annual theatre treat it’s better than no panto at all. £15. Rebecca Luker - All I Ask of You Click here to watch I lost my friend Rebecca Luker this week to motor neurone disease. She was the loveliest person in the Broadway theatre and one of the most talented. A 3-time Tony Award nominee, Becca’s effortless crystalline soprano and flawless diction soared over theatres, orchestras and audiences. I thought you’d like to hear her as I shall remember her, happily singing her favourite song from the show in which she made her Broadway debut, Phantom of the Opera.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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