A Chorus Line was a phenomenon when it opened on Broadway in 1975. With music by Marvin Hamlish and direction by Michael Bennett, it won all the most important awards of the year, including Pulitzer and Tony (it received 9 of the 12 nominations), broke records, and ran the world. The Brazilian production had an unknown and young Claudia Raia in the cast.

The story is relatively simple: artists go through the grueling casting process for a musical, where there are only eight vacancies for a group position (chorus line): 4 men and 4 women. We start with over 20 candidates, 16 are selected for the final part of the audition, led by the choreographer, Zach.

With everyone lined up and numbered, Zach starts interviewing them one by one, so they can tell us why they like dancing. In a delightful process, we started with a group, started to see each one as a soloist, and then said goodbye to the company as a group. Each song is more exciting than the last, it’s a delight.

However, in 1985, when award-winning director Richard Attenborough brought A Chorus Line to the cinema, it was a failure. The stage chemistry was not transported to the film, in a succession of clipped scenes and without charismatic artists involving us. So when Ryan Murphy announced that he would turn the musical into a Netflix series, many turned up their noses. I am not!

The news was released 5 years ago and the status is still pre-production, but there is a crucial difference in the project. It’s not the musical, but how it was born and reached the stage. That’s right, it’s the adaptation of the 1990 book, On the Line: The Creation of “A Chorus Line”. Yes, it must be fascinating.

The idea for the play obviously came from the creators’ experience in the competitive environment of musicals, using as a basis for the script a series of recorded discussions with the dancers, in a format that is what we see on stage. In the book, we follow the 19 artists from the original cast as they tell how they got involved in the project and worked for months until its premiere.

Ryan Murphy is today the most versatile showrunner in activity and has already done horror, comedy, and musicals, he will definitely rescue A Chorus Line for new generations. There will be 10 episodes and there is still no casting news, but Ryan’s proposal is to use and abuse meta-language, with interviews and tapes from the play’s original director, Michael Bennett, as a basis. Yes, the most classic songs – At the Ballet, One and What I Did For Love – will be in the series. Unfortunately, it should only debut in 2025, with a good chance of being later. Doesn’t it trigger anxiety?

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