A Chorus Line

In 2025 A Chorus Line celebrates its 50th birthday, but this far down the line the show hasn’t aged a bit. It's still the groundbreaking crown jewel of musical theatre. With a score by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante, it has as many ‘theatre standards’ in the score as Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables. It also has a handful of dance routines and combinations that, at some point, get burned into every theatre performer’s being.

After their concert staging of Phantom of the Opera in 2024, Curtain Bounce’s production of A Chorus Line is flawless. It's raised, nay, high-kicked the bar on the Central Coast to yet another level.

Jacen Sorenson’s direction is bold, yet beautifully nuanced and fiercely intimate, and with the material calling for a bare stage thus leaving nowhere to hide, he has crafted the strongest piece of direction in recent memory. The program notes that he’s been waiting 25 years to direct this production. The wait was worth it. The work runs two hours with no interval, and Sorenson’s vision and masterful direction keep the entire audience hanging on every single word, kick, and head-pop for the entire time.

It's almost mind-warping how a ‘bare stage’ felt so well-crafted and curated, and that's largely due to Matthew Lutz’s lighting design. It packed such a punch and made Laycock Street Community Theatre’s stage look the best it ever has.

Musically, with Lindsay Kaul wielding the baton, it’s no shock the orchestra is exactly as it should be - jazzy, booming, with a brass section that reverberates into your soul.

Ashlea Rood’s choreography is stunning, and her integration of Michael Bennett's classic staging and with her own flair is seamless. At its heart, A Chorus Line is of course, the dance musical, and the cast make Rood’s work look smooth, slick, and painfully effortless.

With an ensemble piece like this it's devastatingly hard to attempt to speak about the talent pouring off the stage, but each of the 17 dancers on the line, and those cut in the first number, give it absolutely everything. I ask each of them, and their ‘in-universe’ creative team of Zach and Lara, to forgive me for not name-checking each, but trust me when I say they deserve every single bit of praise that will come their way.

Now having had a few moments to collate my thoughts, two performances stopped me in my tracks: Erin Hobden as Diana Morales and Max Howard as Paul San Marco.

Howard’s soul-crushing monologue later in the show was so captivating you could hear a pin drop, and Hobden is a name to remember. The precision and professionalism in her performance is a knock-out.

It's extremely rare as a reviewer, being ‘comp’d in’ and trusted to say nice things by a production company, that you leave the show and immediately open the box office platform to book and pay to see it again before even opening your notes app to brain-dump your thoughts.

A Chorus Line has always felt like a pilgrimage for musical goers and this particular production is essential viewing for anyone who can get themselves to see it. I have no reservations declaring this the best musical the Central Coast has ever seen.

Joshua Maxwell

Photography: Ripple Narratives