Dublin School plans to present the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “A Chorus Line,” at the school next week.
“The largest contingent of kids that want to perform this year love musical theatre, so that’s why we could do this show,” said Jenny Foreman, the school’s director of the arts and director of the show.
The show includes several well-known musical numbers including “What I Did for Love, “One,” “I Can Do That,” “At the Ballet,” “The Music and the Mirror” and “I Hope I Get It.”
“A Chorus Line” is a dance-heavy show, full of big musical numbers as well as small intimate and intense scenes that require strong well-rounded performers, Foreman said. For many reasons, Foreman said, she was confident this was the year she had the cast for “A Chorus Line.”
“I knew I had a lot of strong dancers. I knew they would connect with the show,” she said. “We have a dance program in the fall that’s a sports option, but we also have a dance ensemble that is through the whole year and that is more advanced dancers and those dancers, that core group, is really into musical theatre this year.”
Foreman said she also thought the students – dancers and alike movers – would connect with the performers they were portraying.
“I think in general this show really speaks to themes the students as teenagers are dealing with or thinking about in our world and sometimes it’s a little edgy in terms of some of the language or content,” Foreman said. “They talk a little bit about adolescence … There are some funny numbers that break the tension now and then. There’s some funny moments like that. So I feel the cast is pretty connected to the show, even though they are not all dancers.”
Foreman said she also picked “A Chorus Line” because she has so many strong performers she didn’t want a typical musical.
The hit musical was originally conceived, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett, with co-choreographer Bob Avian. With the book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban.
The show was based on a series of workshops and interviews with real Broadway performers and partnered with the premise of an intense Broadway director casting a show and putting the perspective chorus line through an arduous personal audition process.
“Through that, different stories come out and each person gets a feature,” Foreman said. “We have so many strong performers, I didn’t want to do a show that is driven by a couple of leads. I wanted to have a show that had a feature for everyone in the cast. So it splits it out so each person has their own monologue or song.”
The cast of twenty-five includes several local students: Alexandra Catlin, Nora Rogers, Otto Vogel, and Rohyn Contreras Schofield of Dublin; Gwyneth Thomson of Walpole, Lyle Hutchins of Chesterfield, Erin Meiklejohn, Thomas Meiklejohn and Cliff O’Rourke of Peterborough, Willow Morrison of Keene and Emma Williams of Concord.
Foreman is being assisted by fellow faculty members – musical director Patrick Marr and stage manager Sophie Luxmoore.
Accomplished local musicians, including pianist Tom Martin, are providing the show with live music.
“A Chorus Line” opens Thursday and runs through Sunday. Showtimes are 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday. All performances will be in the Fountain Arts Theater on the Dublin School campus.
Tickets free, donations welcome, reservations suggested: 603 563-1285 or dstone@dublinschool.org.
Some material in “A Chorus Line” may not be suitable for children. Parents are asked to use discretion.
For more information about the show, you can go online to https://www.dublinschool.org.